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UTH 






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LIBRARY OF CONGRESS. 

Chap. Copyright No. 

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UNITED STATES OF AMERICA. 



present Crutb 



— BY — 



REV. A/ B. SIMPSON. 




PUBLISHED BY 

CHRISTIAN ALLIANCE PUBLISHING CO., 
South Nyack, N. Y. 



^.^^ TWO CftPIK VffUErVED 






4401 



Copyright 1897, 

BY 

Ret. a. B. Simpson. 



CONTENTS. 



T. INTRODUCTION. 

II. THE SUPERNATURAL GOD. 

III. THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 

IV. THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 

V. THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 

VT. THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 

VII. THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 

VIII. THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 



PRESENT TRUTH/ 

"The present truth." II Peter i. 12. 
INTRODUCTION. 

While all iiispired truth is necessary 
and important yet there are certain truths 
which God emphasizes at certain times. 
He is ever speaking to the age and genera- 
tion and He never speaks at random but 
always to the point and to the times. 
When the thought of the age was being 
drawn to the supremacy of one man and 
taught to recognize the Sovereign Pontiff 
as the viceroy of heaven and the direct 
representative of Christ on earth then God 
raised up John Calvin to emphasize the 
doctrine of God^s sovereignty and to 
teach the age that He alone had a right to 
dominate the hearts of men. 

When Formalism had spread its sopor- 
ific influence over the heart of Christen- 
dom God raised up the Wesleys, George 
Whitfield, Fletcher and the evangelical 
leaders of that generation to teach the 



6 PRESENT TRUTH. 

necessity of the new birth and to empha- 
size the work of the Holy Ghost. 

Later oame an evangelical movement 
bringing into clear and bold relief the 
doctrine of justification by faith as against 
the nominal church of the times. 

Then came the doctrine of the premil- 
lenial coming of Christ the testimony of 
men like Pastor Franke and George Mul- 
ler to the ministry of faith and the prom- 
ise of God to answer His people^s prayers 
for temporal needs; and the testimony 
and teaching of Blumhardt, Trndel, 
Boardman^ Charles Cnllis^Dr. Gordon and 
others who emphasize the ministry of 
healing. 

So a generation ago God used the min- 
istry of Charles Finney and the testimony 
of his followers to bring into prominence 
the doctrine of a deeper Christian life as 
an antidote to the worldliness and com- 
promising spirit of the times. 

And so from age to age God speaks the 
special message most needed so that there 
is always some portion of Divine truth 
which might properly be called present 



INTRODUCTION. 7 

truths God^s message to the times. God is 
always wanting messengers that under- 
stand Him and that ^"^preach the preach- 
ing He bids;^^ and when He can find such 
instruments He will always use them and 
bless their ministry. Perhaps one reason 
why He has been pleased to bless the 
work which many of us are permitted so 
imperfectly to represent is because^ in some 
measure, we may have got His meaning 
and be working out His plan. 

There is one line of truth which seems 
to be pre-eminently present truth and that 
is the truth about 

THE SUPERNATURAL. 

Man has got so much in love with man 
that he is in danger of overlooking God. 
The boasted progress of our times has so 
dazzled us with its secondary light that we 
cannot see the glorious Sun that is shin- 
ing in the firmament of God's heaven. 
The devil is trying to get the supernatural 
out of the Bible, out of the church, and 
out of our individual Christian life and 
reduce religion to a human science; oblit- 






S PRESENT TRUTH. 

erating everything that cannot be ex- 
plained on a rational principle and from 
natural causes; so that even our blessed 
Hope of the coming Kingdom is laughed 
down and man thinks himself all-sufficient 
to achieve his own destinies and bring 
about the highest development of the race. 
Over against this stands God^s revela- 
tion of the supernatural. Let us look at 
it until it shall dwarf our human pride 
into its true insignificance and give us 
adequate views of ourselves and our times 
in the light of the infinite God "Of whom 
and by whom and for whom are all 
things.^' 



\ 



THE SUPERNATURAL GOa 

The first sentence in the Bible brings 
us face to face not with men nor even with 
nature but with God — ^Tn the beginning 
God/^ True there is a verb that follows, 
the verb ^^created;^^ but long before we 
reach that there is an emphatic pause and 
the infiinite Deity stands before us filling 
immensity and enbosoming within His 
own being the whole creation and the 
myriad beings that are afterwards to come 
forth from His almighty hand. The Book 
begins with God and it would be a good 
thing if every book and every chapter in 
every life had the same safe and sublime 
beginning. 

And so the Book ends with God. We 
turn to the last message and we read in 
the Apocalypse,"! am Alpha and Omega, 
the Beginning and the Ending, the First 
and the Last saith He that was and is and 
is to come, the Almighty/^ He that be- 
gan as Alpha is ending as Omega, and be- 



10 PRESENT TRUTH. 

tween these two extremes lie the whole 
story of redemption. 

If we turn to the last verse of the 
Apocalypse we find that leaving out the 
benediction the Book ends with Jesus 
Christ. It begins with God and ends with 
Jesus Christ and between these two divine 
names lies the whole story of revelation. 

In beautiful similarity the apostle's 
great draft upon the bank of heaven, "My 
God shall supply all your need according 
to His riches in glory by Christ Jesus/*' 
begins with "My God'' and ends with 
"Christ Jesus/' while between lies all our 
need and its infinite supply. What a safe 
and blessed place to be! 

In accordance with this majestic be- 
ginning God is always projecting His per- 
sonality and presence upon the scene of 
the story of revelation and redemption. 
There is a sublime egotism in the Bible 
and you would feel that that which in 
others would be unbecoming in Him is 
absolutely right. Over and over again He 
asserts Himself, and every instinct of our 
being recognizes His pre-eminence, His 



THE SUPERNATURAL GOD. 11 

sovereignty and His right to be supreme. 
It is just what man needs to know and 
recognize, the presence and the glory of 
his God. It is what our life needs above 
all other needs, to know Him, to realize 
His presence and to live under the shadow 
of the Almighty. 

We sometimes meet men who impress 
us not so much with their own personality 
as with the presence of God which they 
carry with them. This was the char- 
acteristic of Enoch. There is little said 
about Enoch. The only thing remark- 
able about him was the Divine Presence in 
which he walked. We read of Samuel 
and Elijah that each was recognized as 
"the man of God." 

This is what we want in our lives, to 
know God, to walk with God, to be men 
of God and then to minister God to other 
men. 

Whenever God called men into a closer 
relation or sent them on some higher com- 
mission He always accompanied it with 
some marked revelation of Himself. 



12 PRESENT TRUTH. 

ABKAHAM^ 

So we find Him coining to Abraham at 
the crisis of his life as El-Shadai and then 
commanding Abraham to rise to a higher 
place in conformity to the new revelation 
that He had given. 

"I am El-Shadai/' He says, 'Valk be- 
fore Me and be thon perfect or upright.'' 
I am the Almighty, the Absolute, the In- 
finite the All-sufficient God. Now live up 
to the vision you have had , the revelation 
I have given. Stand straight up to the 
standard God has given. Live as if you 
had a God that is all-sufiicient. 

You have not been living thus. You 
have not been walking before Me. You 
have been walking before Sara, before 
Hagar, before circumstances, before your 
difficulties and limitations and infirmities. 
Now lift your vision above all these, look 
at Me alone and see in Me ^^the God who 
is enough,'' and stand upright in uncom- 
promising faith. And so henceforth 
Abraham ^^staggered not at the promise 
of God through unbelief but was strong 
in faith giving glory to God and being 



THE SUPERNATURAL GOD. 13 

fully persuaded that He who had prom- 
ised was abundantly able to perform/^ 

The secret of Abraham's faith was his 
realization of the supernatural God. And 
so in describing him in the fourth of Eo- 
maEs the apostle says that he measured up 
to God '^^like Him whom he believed, even 
God who quickeneth the dead and calleth 
the things that are not as if they were.'' 

MOSES. 

So when God came to Moses to send 
him forth on his stupendous undertaking 
the only thing He sought to impress upon 
his mind was the supernatural Presence 
that was to go with him. His one answer 
to all the fears and doubts of Moses was '^T 
Am that I Am." He just drew a great 
check upon Himself and signed it leaving 
a blank line for Moses to fill up and complete 
with anything he pleased. He seemed to 
say "I am courage in your difficulties. I 
am power in your weakness. I am victoij^ 
over Pharoah. I am sovereignty over the 
Red Sea, I am bread for the wilderness 
and water from the rock; I am the guide 



14 PKESENT TRUTH. 

for the desert and the conqueror for the 
Midiantes and the Canaanites; I am mercy 
and forgiveness for the gainsaying people 
that you lead/^ And oh, that Moses had 
also added one thing more, ^^I am grace 
and strength to keep even you from miss- 
ing the Promised Land/^ 

And when Moses still parleyed and pro- 
crastinated God answered with that one 
final word, ^^Certainly I will be with thee.*' 
Later in the story of the wilderness we 
find Moses falling back on this great 
promise and cr)ang, "If Thy Presence go 
not with us carry us not up hence/' and 
the answer came, "My Presence shall go 
with thee.'' It was God and God alone 
that made Moses what he was and Israel 
what it became. 

JOSHUA. 

This was all the equipment of Joshua 
for his victorious succession to Moses. "Be 
strong and of good courage for the Lord 
thy God is with thee whithersoever thou 
goest" was the divine assurance; "Fear not 
for I will not fail thee nor forsake thee.'' 



THE SUPERNATURAL GOD. 15 

When a little later Joshua was in danger 
of looming up too large in his own leader- 
ship God met him and laid him in the 
dust and took command Himself of Israel's 
victorious armies of faith. Going forth 
to reconoitre the ramparts of Jericho he 
met a man with a drawn sword^ and^ true 
to his soldierly instinct^ he challenged 
him and cried, ^^Art thou for us or for our 
adversaries ?'' The answer that came laid 
him prostrate on his face. ^^Nay, but as 
Captain of the Lord's host I am come. Put 
off thy shoes from off thy feet. I am 
Leader and you hav but to do my bidding 
and let me triumph through you.^' 

All through the Old Testament God 
was ever teaching men to recognize Him 
as the Living One and the Almighty and 
Supernatural Presence on whom they 
could ever count as they followed His di- 
rection. 

ISAIAH. 

It was the vision of God that called 
Isaiah to his ministry and strengthened 
him to bear the rejection of his country- 



16 PRESENT TRUTH. 

men and to stand alone with God in the 
midst of a gainsaying people. 

There is nothing finer in the Scriptures 
than His majestic promise to 



JEREMIAH. 



2 



Jeremiah xxxiii. 3. "^Thus saith Jehov- 
ah, the Maker of it, Jehovah that formed 
it, to establish it, Jehovah is His name. 
Call unto Me and I will answer thee and 
show thee great and mighty things which 
thou knewest not.^^ 

This is a very glorious and inspiring 
promise but the most glorious part of it is 
the preface and the name by which God 
introduces Himself to the prophet. "Thils 
saith Jehovah, the Maker of it.^^ That is, 
not the Creator of the universe but the 
Creator of the thing which Jeremiah is 
about to ask for. It is something which 
does not now exist and for which the very 
materials do not yet appear. It is some- 
thing which, naturally speaking, is impos- 
sible. It is something which God has to 
cut, not out of whole cloth, but out of no 
cloth. It is something which must be 



THE SUPERNATUKAL GOD. 17 

created in order to become a reality and 
of which he says, ^^I am the Maker of it, 1 
will create it at the call of your faith; I 
will form it and then I will establish it/^ 

This is the faith of which the apostle 
speaks in the epistle to the Hebrews: "By 
faith we understand that the worlds were 
framed by the Word of God so that the 
things which are seen were not made out 
of things that do appear/^ That is to 
say, it is a faith that believes in the un- 
seen and in the creation of things that 
are not yet real. It is a faith that can 
take Him for a gentleness you do have 
in your temper, for courage when you 
are like a trembling reed shaken of the 
wind, for a steadfast will when you are 
as irresolute as the drifting sand, for 
righteousness and holiness when every in- 
stinct of your nature and every tendency 
of your training leads you in the down- 
ward road, for health and strength when 
your body is a wreck and the very ele- 
ments of health are gone, for souls 
that seem as hard as adamant, and for 
service where every door appears to be 



18 PRESENT TRUTH. 

closed and every effort vain. This is the 
God we are dealing with, the God of the 
supernatural, "the Maker therefore Jehov- 
ah is His name.^^ Let us recognize Him. 
Let us trust Him, let us use Him in His 
infinite all-sufficiency. 

HAGGAI. 

In the book of Haggai there is a beauti- 
ful collection of promises in which God 
tells His struggling little flock as they are 
seeking to accomplish the great work of 
the Eestoration in troublous times and 
with feeble resources that His presence is 
with them, that His Spirit remaineth 
among them and that they need not fear 
but that they may be strong and work 
with the confidence of success. In this 
beautiful paragraph it is striking to notice 
how often the prophet repeats the lofty 
name, "Thus saith the Lord of Hosts.^^ 
Again and again in the same verse it 
comes in two or three times, "Thus saith 
the Lord of Hosts.^^ It is as if God was 
ever bidding His trembling children to 
look up in His face and reassure them- 






THE SUPERNATURAL GOD. 19 



selves that He was speaking, that He was 
there and that He was equal to even this 
emergency. 

It is paralleled by that beautiful trans- 
lation of the promise of Christ to Paul 
over against his infirmities. "He said un- 
to me/^ or rather in the Greek, "He kept 
saying unto me My grace is sufficient for 
thee.^^ Over and o^er again He would re- 
peat to us the assurance of His presence 
and His all-sufficiency. 

THE GREAT COMMISSION. 

Once more when Christ was about to 
give the commission to His apostles to go 
forth and evangelize the nations He em- 
phasized to them that mighty assurance of 
His Almightiness and Omnipresence. "All 
power is given unto Me in heaven and on 
earth and lo, I am with you always even 
unto the end of the age.^^ 

This is the warrent for our missionary 
enterprise, for our boldest faith, for our 
loftiest endeavor, for our most difficult 
undertaking. We have the supernatural 



20 PRESENT TRUTH. 

Christ to lead us as we go forth, against 
principalities and powers and the forces 
of eari:h and hell. 

In conclusion the reason God empha- 
sizes His supremacy is because of man's 
ignorant and foolish pride. We live in an 
age of human self-sufficiency when boast- 
ing man is sayings "Go to^ let us build a 
tower to reach unto heaven/^ and God is 
saying in divine pity and scorn, "Go to, 
let us go down and confound their speech.^^ 

But it is not in the spirit of our petty 
egotism that God is ever asserting Him- 
self. It is because His sovereignty is as 
necessary for the universe as for His own 
glory. As He repeats the personal pro- 
noun and stands before us in sublime self- 
consciousness we feel that what would be 
presumption in any man is right in the 
case of God, and that it is essential to 
the order and well being of the universe 
that He should be recognized as All in 
All. 

His sovereignty and supremacy is the 
supply of all our need. The more we de- 
crease and let Him increase the more shall 



THE SUPERNATURAL GOD. 21 

[our happiness and blessing increase. Our 
town self importance is the greatest hind- 
Irance to the revelation of God in our hearts 
pand lives. In order that He may come in 
self must go out. The more we die to 
ourselves the more room we have to re- 
ceive Him in His fulness. 

There is much wholesome instruction in 
the incident of the lad whom his father 
was reprimanding because of his poor pro- 
gress in his studies and the little fellow 
was complaining that he did his best and 
that he was not able to remember the 
things he read. The father had noticed 
in the boy^s room a good many yellow cov- 
ered books and he said, ^^Charlie, I want 
you to empty out that basket of apples on 
the sideboard.^^ Charlie emptied out the 
apples, and then his father said, ^^Go out 
to the carpenter shop next door and bring 
me in a basketful of chips and shavings.'^ 
He did as he was told and when the basket 
came back it was half full of chips. 
^^Now/^ said his father, ^^put in the ap- 
ples.^^ Charlie put in a few of the apples 
and they began to tumble off. 'Tut them 



22 PRESENT TRUTH. 

in/^ said his father, ^^piit them all in/^ ^'I 
can't/^ said Charlie, "they won^t go." 
"Why won't they go?'' said his father. 
"^Vhy/' said Charlie, "because the basket 
is half full of chips and it won't hold all 
the apples now." "Ah/' said his father, 
"that is the trouble with you. You have 
been trying to fill your head with whole- 
some knowledge when it is already full of 
foolish story books that you have been 
cramming yourself with." "I see," said 
Charlie, and he started off in a hurry and 
after that conversation the yellow books 
had disappeared, Charlie's mind was filled 
with wholesome knowledge and his life be- 
came useful. 

Carry the story a little higher and we 
will find the secret of our spiritual failures. 
AVe have been trying to fill with the Holy 
O^host hearts that are already filled with a 
thousand things. We have been trying co 
make Christ King while all the time the 
old rebel self was in His way and usurping 
His throne. 

Finally the revelation of God in our 
hearts and lives is but the overlapping of 



THE SUPERNATURAL GOD. 23 

that glorious revealing of God for which 
the age is waiting. We are looking for 
that Blessed Hope and glorious appearing 
of the great God and our Saviour Jesus 
Christ and He comes first in the inner 
vision and then in the outward revelation. 
He is projecting His personality upon the 
heart of His waiting Bride. He is making 
Himself intensely real to those who will 
let Him and for them some day He will 
burst through the veil of sense and they 
shall cry as they behold Him, "Lo, this is 
our Gfod. We have waited for Him.^^ 

In the old days of New England a com- 
pany of our Pilgrim fathers were in great 
destitution, waiting for a ship from Eng- 
land with supplies which was long over- 
due. One good woman in the company 
had been praying in strong faith and tell- 
ing the people that the ship would come 
in due time. Sure enough, one evening 
they looked out over Boston Bay and lo, 
the ship was in full view and their hearts 
were filled with joy and hope. But when 
the morning dawned the ship had disap- 
peared. Some of them said it was a mi- 



24 PRESENT TRUTH. 

rage or perhaps a refraction of the coming 
ship projected by indirect rays of light be- 
fore the ship itself came into full vievr. 
but they felt sure that as they had seen 
the vision they would surely see the ship. 
And they did. Before the week was over 
she was docked in the harbor and was 
dealing out her stores of bread to the starv- 
ing colonists. 

And so God gives us first the vision of 
the living, personal, glorious Christ and 
soon our eyes shall see Him and we shall 
be with Him forever. Let us understand 
Him in all His glory and some day we 
shall be like Him when we shall see Him 
as He is. 



\ 



I 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 

Being born again, not of corruptible seed 
but of incorruptible, by the word of God 
which liveth and abideth forever. For all 
flesh is as grass and all the glory of man as 
the flower of the grass. The grass wither- 
eth and the flower thereof falleth away; but 
the word of the Lord endureth forever. I 
Peter i. 23-25. 

There is no testimony that needs to be 
more emphatically pressed upon the 
hearts of men today than the inspiration 
and supreme authority of the Word of 
God. The malignity of Satan and the 
pride of human culture are striving as 
never before to eliminate the supernat- 
ural from the Holy Scriptures and change 
the Book of God into a mere collection of 
ancient writings, saved out of the wreck 
of the world^s literature. 

The Bible stands apart from all other 
books, and has survived and will survive 
all the attacks of its enemies. As some 
one has said with great force and beauty 



26 PRESENT TRUTH. 

it is like yonder electric torch that shines 
over the water of New York Bay, struck 
by the wing of many a seabird that dashes 
against it in its reckless flight, but still 
shining on unmoved while the foolish and 
reckless assailant falls bleeding and 
wounded at its feet. 

Or, as another has forcibly said, it is 
an an^al which has worn out many a ham- 
mer of hostile criticism, while the anvil 
still remains unshaken amid the wreck 
of all that have assailed it. 

ITS SUBLIME ISOLATION. 

It stands above all other books in a su- 
preme and sublime isolation. "Bring me 
the Book,^^ said Sir Walter Scott to his 
son-in-law when he was dying. As Lock- 
hart asked him, "What book. Sir Walter,'' 
his simple answer was, "There is but one 
—the Bible.'' 

THE BIBLE REMAINS. 

It is said that when Alexander Duff was 
on his voyage to India with a large quan- 
tity of excellent baggage, including a 
splendid library of more than eight hun- 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 27 

died volumes, the ship on which he was 
sailing was wrecked off the Cape of Good 
Hope, and when the rescued passengers 
reached the shore the only thing of all his 
baggage that was saved was a Bible that 
the waves had washed upon the sands; 
and as he picked it up and removed the 
wrapping he found it was perfectly unin- 
jured, and he was so deeply touched with 
the incident that he opened it, and read 
some of its precious promises to the little 
company that stood around him on the 
shore. All his splendid books had per- 
ished, but the Bible remained as the only 
salvage from the wreck. To him it was a 
beautiful figure of that which afterward 
became the object of his life, that the 
Bible was the only book that would re- 
main out of the world^s literature, and the 
only book which was worth giving to In- 
dia — the land for which he was going 
forth to live and die. 

All the literature of the ages must 
perish in the flight of time, but, like 
Duff^s rescued Bible, God^s Word will live 
and survive the wreck of ages, and also 



28 PRESENT TRUTH. 

give to those that embraced it an immor- 
tality as glorious as its own. 

It is very sad and humbling to see the 
tendency among so many of those who 
ought to be the defenders and the teach- 
ers of this holy volume to win a little 
cheap popularity and wear the reputation 
of higher culture by joining in the ranks 
of those who, if they do not reject it al- 
together, will compromise its supremacy 
and question its infallible authority. The 
Bible is either everything or nothing. 
Like a chain which depends upon its 
weakest link, if God^s Word is not abso- 
lutely true and all true, it is too weak a 
cable to fix our anchorage and guarantee 
our eternal peace. Thank God, we have 
reason to accept it as the supernatural 
revelation of the supernatural God, the 
word not of man, but the Word of God 
that liveth and abideth forever. 

SUKVIVED ITS ENEMIES. 

It has survived the assaults of its critics 
as the ages have gone by, and, while not 
claiming to teach philosophy and science. 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 29 

yet even philosophy and science with all 
their progress, have not been able to es- 
tablish a single argument against its 
credibility. While the so-called science 
of one generation has challenged it the 
advanced knowledge of the next genera- 
tion has but confirmed it. 

The time was when the first chapter 
of Genesis was supposed to contradict the 
established facts of science by teaching 
that light was created in the beginning, 
while the sun and the other heavenly 
bodies were not created until the fourth 
day. But a few years later God led 
science to discover the spectroscope, and 
with it the fact that light did exist before 
the sun, and that Moses was in perfect 
accord with the real facts of nature. 

Keverent scholarship is finding out 
every day that even in the very allusions 
of God's Word to the sublime facts of 
nature there are hidden harmonies with 
the great truths which science is only 
now discovering, and when Job spoke of 
the sweet influence of the Pleiades and 
David sang in the nineteenth Psalm of 



30 PRESENT TRUTH. 

the light speaking, they were really teach- 
ing some of the deepest facts and latest 
discoveries of the majestic sciences of Op- 
tics and x\stronomy. 

Out of every conflict this Divine Book 
will come forth vindicated and victorious. 

ITS WITNESSES. 

"Like some tall cliff that lifts its awful form, 
Swells from the vale and midway leaves 
the storm, 
Though round its breast the rolling elquds 
are spread, 
Eternal sunshine settles on its head." 

MIRACLES. 

Let it suffice to bring, at this time, five 
witnesses to the supernatural character 
and supreme authority of the Word of 
God. 

1. Miracles. This book appeals to us 
by a supernatural test. It claims as its 
credentials the superhuman power of its 
witnesses. It appeals to the infinite Cre- 
ator to certify to its message by the works 
which are known to be beyond the power 
of any created agent. The stock objec- 
tion to miracles which has become famous 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 31 

through the writings of David Hume, 
namely, that a miracle is contrary to the 
uniformity of nature and therefore cannot 
be true, because we are bound to believe 
the uniform testimony of nature against 
any single testimony that seems to con- 
tradict it. This argument is absolutely 
as weak and foolish as our experience of 
nature is limited and partial. Just as 
well might a chief of the Upper Congo 
say to an explorer who told him about 
the ice of our northern climates, and as- 
sure him that he had seen rivers com- 
pletely frozen over and water become as 
solid as stone, "Such a thing is contrary 
to all the experience of nature,^^ and he 
would laugh him to scorn. Such a thing 
had never been heard of by him or his 
fathers, or any of the neighboring chiefs, 
or, in fact, anybody in Central Africa. 
This would be perfectly true within the 
limited range of his little world. But 
that world was but a segment of a vaster 
circle. 

Hume's fallacy. 
So David Hume's experience and the 



32 PRESENT TRUTH. 

experience of the world as he had traced it 
and observed it was by no means con- 
clusive as to the complete facts even of 
nature itself. There was a larger circle 
that he had not spanned, and within that 
circle the facts of miracles are as real as 
the facts of the ordinary operations of 
nature on the lower plane. In fact, some 
day we shall probaby find that even 
miracles are but the operation of the 
higher laws on a Divine plan which we 
have not understood; that it is the letting 
down for a moment of the forces of that 
spiritual realm which some day shall be 
our natural sphere. 

But the facts themselves when demon- 
strated by satisfactory evidences are con- 
clusive seals and attestations of the truth 
of the testimony which appeals to God 
through these credentials. Christ distinct- 
ly appealed to the works that He did as 
the evidences of His Divine character and 
the truth of His teachings, and we can- 
not imagine God, if He be a holy God, 
answering this appeal and bearing wit- 
ness to His testimony if it were not true. 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 33 

It is said that the maker and custodian 
of the great clock in Strasbnrg Cathedral 
had a grave misunderstanding with the 
authorities of the cathedral, and finding 
them unwilling to yield he quietly- 
touched a spring in the tower and the 
clock stopped moving. The people won- 
dered, questioned, complained and pro- 
tested. The authorities employed me- 
chanics and experts and skilled artisans 
in vain. Nobody could understand the 
works or make the clock go until at last 
they were obliged to appeal to the maker 
and yield to his terms, and then he quiet- 
ly touched the spring again, and lo, the 
whole mechanism began to move. It was 
because he was the maker he could ar- 
rest it, he could restore its operations. 

And so there is but one hand that can 
suspend the mighty wheels of nature's 
complicated mechanism, and there is but 
one Hand that can restore their power 
when interrupted. And when we see that 
Hand put forth to close the heavens at 
the word of Elijah, and then to open the 
brazen skies and send forth the copious 



34 PRESENT TRUTH. 

showers at the same prophetic word, we 
know that He is bearing witness to the 
word of His servant. When we see the 
waves stilled, the sick healed, the dead 
raised, the very Son of God Himself come 
forth from the sealed tomb, with the dis- 
tinct asservation that these are the very 
credentials claimed by the witnesses who 
have given to us this Word, what but 
obstinate and inveterate blindness can 
doubt that this is indeed the authorized 
message of heaven, the Word of the living 
God? 

PROPHECY. 

2. Prophecy. Prophecy is the next 
great witness to the inspiration of the 
Scriptures. The shrewdness of the hu- 
man intellect may succeed in guessing 
with some degree of probability about the 
future. But there is an infinite distance 
between the boldest and wisest guesses of 
heathen oracles or human sages and the 
clear, decided predictions of the Holy 
Scriptures. 

The criteria of prophecy are exceeding- 



1 



Tfifi SUPilRNATURAL 600!^. 35 

ly simple and obvious. 

First, the event predicted must be at a 
sufficient distance in the future. 

Secondly, the prediction must be ex- 
plicit, and marked by points of identifica- 
tion about which there can be no mistake 
such as locality, circumstances, names, 
etc. 

Thirdly, there must be no apparent 
cause or train of circumstances that might 
bring about the event in question which 
could be known to the author of the pre- 
diction. Fourth^ the fulfillment must be 
open, public and sufficiently witnessed 
to render all deception impossible. 

These are but a few of the tests of 
prophecy which distinguished them from 
the guesses of human wisdom, and in 
these respects the Scripture prophecies 
shine in the meridian sunlight of truth. 

Let us look for a moment at three 
classes of prophecies. 

NATIONAL PROPHECIES. 

First the prophecies concerning the 
nations and political systems of the world. 
Centuries before the time of their fulfill- 



36 I>RESENT TRUTH. 

ment a number of prophetic witnesses, in- 
cluding such men as Isaiah, Jeremiah and 
Daniel, foretold the actual order of the 
world^s great empires, the rise and fall of 
Babylon, Medo-Persia, Greece, Eome, and 
the political and ecclesiastical systems 
that were to come out of Eome. A per- 
fect panorama of the political future of 
the world was laid out, and all the cen- 
turies since have been literally fulfilling it. 

Now, how could any human guess have 
ever foreshadowed these stupendous re- 
sults? The events were too far in the 
distance to render them probable, and the 
fulfillment has been open in the face of 
the universe. 

The same conclusion would be reached 
if we had time to take up in detail spe- 
cial prophecies concerning the fall of 
Nineveh, the capture of Babylon, the 
career of Cyrus, the history of nations like 
Edom, Egypt, Tyre, in the light of which 
we see a Divine prescience and an exact 
fulfilment. 

JEWISH PROPHECIES. 

Take the second class of prophecies re- 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 37 

specting the Jews. As long ago as the 
time of Moses and down through the 
whole Old Testament there is a clear line 
of prophecy pointing out the great facts 
of their national history, their supremacy 
among the nations, their fall under the 
power of the Gentile conquerors, their 
captivity on account of their sins^ 
their rejection of the Messiah, their 
dispersion among all nations, their preser- 
vation distinct from all other peoples, 
their restoration ultimately to their own 
land. 

How manifestly all this meets the test 
already given. There was nothing likely 
to lead up to that. The fiulfiUment has 
been open as the day, and so marked has 
been their providential history that when 
the great statesman was asked by one of 
the sovereigns of Europe what argument 
he could give for the truth of Christianity 
his simple answer was, "The Jews, your 
Majesty, the Jews.^^ 

MESSIANIC PROPHECIES.. 

Take the third great class of prophecies, 



38 PKESENT TKUTH. 

namely, those respecting the Lord Jesus 
Christ. How explicitly, how exactly the 
ancient prophecies pointed out all the cir- 
cumstances attending His first and second 
advent; His name, His birth of a virgin 
mother; the very place of His birth — 
Bethlehem; His rejection by His country- 
men; His life of humility and suffering; 
His betrayal for thirty pieces of silver; 
His crucifixion, all the attending circum- 
stances of His death; His resurrection, 
His coming again. So complete was the 
chain of Messianic prophecy that the 
evangelist stops to note at every stage of 
the last sad drama of His agony how each 
incident that happened was "that the 
Scriptures might be fulfiUed.^^ So per- 
fect is the picture that we could construct 
a biography of Christ from the Old Tes- 
tament prophecies alone. Who can an- 
swer this mighty weight of prophetic tes- 
timony? Who can challenge this Divine 
vindication of God^s supernatural Book? 
Who can hesitate to say with holy vener- 
ation and humble faith, "Forever, oh. 
Lord, Thy Word is settled in heaven/^ 



THE SUPEKNATUEAL BOOK. 39 

THE CHARACTEK OF CHRIST. 

3. The life and character of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. The story of Jesus is the 
mightiest proof of the truth of the Gos- 
pels. Such a story is absolutely without 
any explanation unless it be literally true. 
Such a character is to us a miracle, and 
for any human mind to conceive it, invent 
it, to unfold it in these records would be 
a literary achievement so stupendous that 
the author would deserve to be immor- 
talized as himself divine. 

Who conceived this marvellous ideal? 
Whose brain originated this stupendous 
Book, if it was but a book? As Kosseau 
has well said, the creation of such a fic- 
tion would have been a greater miracle 
than to believe the fact itself to be true. 

Dr. Fisher has forcibly said, this char- 
acter is original. The world had nothing 
like it before. It is a blending of all the 
elements at once of gentleness and 
strength, of intellectual force and moral 
perfection, of self-surrender and yet 
sublime dignity and self-respect. There 
is no weakness about it, and yet there is 



40 PRESENT TRUTH. 

no hardness, no selfishness, no pride, no 
despotic ambition to aggrandize Himself 
at the expense of others like all the heroes 
of human history. It is evidently a sin- 
less and spotless and perfect character. 
There is not a sing^le failure anywhere. 
The ideal is sustained throughout con- 
sistently with itself, and even in the very 
tragedy of His death there is a moral 
sublimity and a triumph of character 
greater even than earthly success. 

ITS SIMPLICITY. 

Then it is to be noticed that this char- 
acter is not a study of literary skill, 
wrought up with any preconceived plan 
to create an ideal, but it is developed in- 
cidentally out of a thousand common oc- 
currences in actual life, unfolding day by 
day and evidently as unforeseen by the 
writers as by us. It all grows up natural- 
ly out of facts as they develop and it bears 
upon its very surface the impression of 
simplicity, genuineness and absolute re- 
ality. No man can candidly read these 
Gospel narratives and not feel that he 



THE SUPERNATUEAL BOOK. 41 

is standing in the presence of a Life that 
is supernatural and Divine, and the book 
that records it must be the Word of God. 

Even the great Napoleon is said to 
have remarked, "I think I understand 
somewhat of human nature, and I tell 
you all these were men, and I am a man, 
but not one is like Him. Jesus Christ 
was more than a man. Alexander, Caesar, 
Charlemagne and myself founded great 
empires, but upon what did the creation 
of our genius depend but on force. Jesus 
alone founded His empire upon love, and 
to this day millions would die for Him. 
The Gospel is no mere book, but a living 
creature, with a power which conquers all 
that possess it. Here lies the Book of 
books upon this table.^^ 

THE INFLUENCE OF THE BIBLE. 

4. The' influence of this Book stamps it 
as supernatural and Divine. It has revo- 
lutionized human society. It has civilized 
the nations that have accepted it. It is 
the secret of the greatness and power of 
the Protestant nations. It goes into the 



42 ^RESENT TfttiTa. 

heathen populations, and lo, the cannibals 
of the Fiji Islands are transformed into 
gentle Christians; the savage Indian be- 
comes a peaceful disciple of Christ; the 
selfish Chinaman develops into a heroic 
martyr, and the degraded African rises 
into the noblest type of manhood. The 
polygamist gives np his wives, the 
sorcerer gives np his superstitions, thou- 
sands of men and women become outcasts 
from their homes and often martyrs for 
their faith,and the whole phase of human 
society is stamped with the uplifting im- 
press and the heavenly influence of the 
Book of God. The skeptic finds himself 
travelling in some wild frontier town, and 
lies down at night to sleep with rude 
forms around him, wondering if his life 
and property are safe. But lo, he be- 
holds the Bible on the shelf, he sees the 
little company gather together with the 
closing day and kneel in prayer, and he 
puts his pistol in his pocket and lies down 
to sleep without a fear. He knows where 
God^s Book is supreme his life and prop- 
erty are safe. Skepticism is well enough 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 43 

to laugh and talk about, bat, as Voltarie 
once said when his infidel friends were 
discussing their theories at his dining 
table, "Hush, gentlemen, till the servants 
are gone. If they believed as we do none 
of our lives would be safe.^^ 

EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE. 

5. The final evidence of this super- 
natural Book is the experience of the 
child of God, and the internal evidence 
which it brings to every heart that re- 
ceives it on its owm terms with obedience 
and trust. Like the Jewish tabernacle 
which was very coarse and common look- 
ing on the outside, but whose beauties 
could only be seen from within, this 
blessed Book must be loved to be under- 
stood and appreciated. It speaks to the 
spirit of the child of God with an assur- 
ance that awakes the spontaneous sensi- 
bilities of his renewed being, and answers 
like the people of Samaria, "We have 
heard Him for ourselves, and we know 
that this is indeed the Christ that should 
come into the world.^^ 



44 PRESENT TRUTH. 

If you want to know that this Book is 
true meet it on its own terms. Take it to 
your heart, read it with simplicity and 
candor, test it by obedience and you will 
find it is all and more than all it claims to 
be. 

In the city where I once was a pastor 
there was a brilliant lawyer, who, with his 
young wife, attended my ministry. She 
was a devoted Christian. He was a no- 
torious skeptic, and was recognized as the 
leading free thinker of the community. 
I knew it was vain to argue with him, 
but many hearts were praying for him. 
At last this lovely girl died. A few days 
after her death he sent for me to his of- 
fice, and in a very frank way immediately 
began to tell me that he had just become a 
Christian. I was quite surprised, and 
asked him how it happened. ^^Well," 
said he, "I have read everything on the 
subject for years, and I never could reach 
a conclusion. As I read one side of the 
argument I was partly convinced, but 
when I read the other the balance turned, 
and I never semed quite able to decide be- 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 45 

tween the two. The brain was not strong 
enough to balance these weights, and so J 
have been all my life in a state of honest 
indecision. But while my wife lived with 
me I saw in her something which I did 
not possess, and something that I knew 
to be real; and when she died I saw that 
it was worth all that I possssed, and in 
the agony of my bereavement I suddenly 
found myself one day praying to her God. 
Instantly my reason came to me and pro- 
tested, and I said to myself, why you are 
praying to somebody you don^t believe in; 
but before I could stop it the prayer had 
got into heaven and God had answered 
it, and something came to my heart that 
I had never felt before. It was the touch 
of the supernatural Presence, and it was 
so exquisite and comforting that I just 
kept on praying; God kept on answering 
until this very moment, and although I 
cannot explain it, I cannot justify it by 
my reason, yet I know that it is true, and 
I know that it is God and I am a Chris- 
tian, not through my head, but through 
my heart/^ 



46 PEE SENT TEL'TH. 

Beloved^ that is the secret of faith. 
That is the supreme test. Dare to test it. 

Oh, make but trial of His word, 

Exrerience will decide 
How happy they and only they 

Who in His truth confide. 

TThen you cannot understand the Bible 
through your brain take it in your bosom, 
press it to your hearty bring to it your 
sorrrow, your sin, your need and you will 
know it is true because it has searched 
you, it has saved you, it has converted 
you it has satisfied you. 

A blind girl lay dying and her paralyzed 
fingers had ceased to be able to read by 
touch the raised letters of her precious 
Bible. With a sad cry she dropped it, 
and she said, ^T\Iy precious Bible, I can- 
not feel any more the touch of your 
precious promises.^^ Then in an impulse 
of passionate love she pressed it to her 
lips to say goodby, when suddenly she 
gave a great cry of joy, and she said, "I 
can read it still, I can feel it with my 
lips,^^ and she pressed it again and again, 
page after page, to her sensitive lips r.s 



THE SUPERNATURAL BOOK. 47 

she drank in its consolations, and went to 
sleep with her head pillowed upon its 
heavenly promises. 

Beloved, when all other senses fail you 
can read and understand the Bible with 
your love. It is not a book to talk about. 
It is not a book to play with. It is not a 
book for intellectual discussions or brilliant 
exhibitions of our exegetical acuteness. It 
is a book to love! It is a book to translate 
into living copies and holy example. 

"Each of us is either a Bible or a libel.^' 
Let us reverence it. Let us believe it. 
Let us love it. Let us live it. Let us 
give it to a perishing world. 

Eternal are Thy mercies, Lord; 

Eternal truth attends Thy Word; 
Thy praise shall sound from shore to shore, 

Till suns shall rise and set no more. 



^ 



THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 

*'I live; yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." 
Gal. ii. 20. 

The best edition of the Holy Scriptures 
is a holy life. God wants to translate His 
supernatural Book into the living experi- 
ence of all His children. 

When some one said to Sir Walter 
Scott that he was going to write a book he 
answered, Be a book. 

When the enemies of the apostles saw 
the man who had been healed standing 
in their midst they could say nothing 
against it. A living consistent Bible Chris- 
tian is an unanswerable witness for God 
and evidence for Christianity in every age. 
Christ Himself was the greatest miracle of 
the Gospels and so every Christian should 
be greater than all his works. 

The radical distinction between Chris- 
tianity and all other religions is in the 
characters that it produces. ^^By their 



THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 49 

fruits ye shall know them^^ is Christ^s own 
test and judged by this test Christianity 
is unanswerable. The Christian charac- 
ter is not the product of moral culture. 
The holiest men are the readiest to ac- 
knowledge that in them dwelleth no good 
thing, and that every virtue and grace is 
due alone to the power of the Divine 
Presence as it dwells within them and 
strengthens them against their tempta- 
tions and weaknesses. 

SUPERNATUKAL RIGHTEOUSNESS. 

I. The first supernatural fact in the 
Christian life is a divine righteousness or 
what is termed in the language of theology 
justification. The apostle Paul uses a 
very fine phrase in unfolding this funda- 
mental principle of the Gospel by which 
man becomes right with God. He calls it 
the righteousness of God. It is not mere- 
ly the mercy of God overlooking our fall 
but it is the righteousness of God settling 
our account and putting us right with 
Him. God wants us to stand approved in 
His presence not by our own works but by 



50 PRESENT TRUTH. 

the imputed righteousness of the Lord 
Jesus Christ. God meets us at the very 
threshhold when guilty, condemned, un- 
worthy and excluded from His favor and 
His presence and He clothes us in the very 
merits of His own Son enabling us thus to 
look in the face of the very throne and 
even of the victims and witnesses of our 
crimes and know that we are without 
blame, justified and counted righteous in 
His sight and standing in the same atti- 
tude as if we had never sinned. This is 
the free gift of God, holy, supernatural 
and divine. We are clothed in God's own 
righteousness and while we have nothing 
of our own to boast of yet we can look up 
in the blessed light of the throne and say 

"Jesus. Thy blood and righteousness 
My beauty are, my glorious dress. 
Sinless with these garments on 
I'll face the splendors of Thy throne" 

REGENERATION. 

II. The second supernatural fact of a 
Christian life is regeneration. This is 
quite different from justification. The 



THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 51 

latter makes our relations right with God. 
The former makes our nature right. It 
is the divine impartation to the human be- 
ing of a new life communicated directly 
from God and pure and holy as His own 
very being. This is not moral elevation, 
not self -improvement; not doing or being 
better, but a miracle of grace, a new cre- 
ation, a wonder so stupendous that Nico- 
demus, a Jewish professor of ethics and 
religion, could not comprehend it but 
looked with wonder in the face of Christ 
and asked how could these things be. 

There is nothing parallel to it in nature. 
Perhaps the nearest analogy to it is the 
little ichneumon that deposits its tiny eggs 
through the coarse skin of the caterpillar 
in its body and leaves it there to hatch in 
the warm temperature of his victim until 
it germinates and feeding upon the flesh 
of the caterpillar grows to maturity and 
then bursts the shell and springs into life. 

But here there is a natural progenitor 
of this germ of life. In regeneration 
there is no human power that can propa- 
gate this life. No man can give it 



52 PRESENT TRUTH. 

to his brother. No parent can commimi- 
cate it to his child. "Which are bom not 
of the blood nor of the flesh nor of the will 
of man but of God. The feeblest saint is 
a new order of being in the eyes of the 
angels as marvellous as when Adam 
stepped out upon the theatre of Eden, as 
the morning stars sang together and the 
saints of God shouted for joy. 

SONSHIP. 

III. The next supernatural fact in the 
Christian life is sonship. We enter at 
once the heavenly family. This, too, is a 
surpassing wonder and quite contrary to 
the precedents of the divine government. 
Angels were very high in the scale of be- 
ing but they dared not enter the family 
of God, but sinful man stepped across the 
threshhold of yonder palace and the prod- 
igal comes home to his Pather^s bosom and 
claims a place no archangel can ever know. 
"Behold what manner of love the Father 
hath bestowed upon us that we should be 
called the sons of God^^ was the cry of the 
man who stood nearest to the very centre 
of the throne. 



THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 53 

We are the sons of God by virtue of our 
being born of God. We are not only 
^^ealled^' but we "are^^ the sons of God. 
Not only are we by a decree of adoption 
but every intuition of the new heart leaps 
to meet the Father and knows its own de- 
lightful place of filial recognition for ^^We 
have received the spirit of adoption cry- 
ing, Abba, Father.^^ 

We have a still higher claim to sonship 
by virtue of our union with Christ, the 
only begotten Son of God. Wedded to 
Him we come into His peculiar sonship. 
And so we are called the first born ones, 
the very name that He holds. As a bride 
inherits her husband^s home and is ac- 
cepted as a child, so we go in with Him to 
the innermost chambers of the palace of 
the King while we hear Him say. My 
Father and your Father, My God and your 
God. 

THE INDWELLING CHRIST. 

IV. The indwelling of Christ is the 
next supernatural fact into which we are 
brought. This is a transition as stupend- 
ous as regeneration itself. "If a man 



54 PRESENT TRUTH. 

love Me/^ Christ says, ^Tie will keep My 
words and I will love him and I will mani- 
fest Myself unto him and My Father will 
love him and we will come unto him and 
make our abode with him/^ This is not 
a figure but a fact so glorious and real that 
that the apostle Paul declared it to be the 
very secret which had been hid from ages 
and from generations but which at last 
had been made known to the saints and 
which was committed to him to give as a 
talisman of the victory and the secret of 
heaven^s own life to the children of God. 

THE HOLY SPIRIT. 

V. The baptism of the Holy Ghost. 
While the same in its effects substantially 
as the indwelling of Christ and while it is 
through the Holy Ghost that we come 
into union with Him^ yet it is a 
distinct privilege and experience of the 
Christian life. The prophet Ezekiel in 
describing the experience of a converted 
soul after telling of the new heart and the 
new spirit that He would put within them 
adds this higher promise, ^'I will put My 



THE SUPEKNATURAL LIFE. 55 

Spirit within you and cause you to walk 
in My statutes and ye shall keep My judg- 
ments and do them/^ God^s own Spirit 
comes into the new spirit. It is not only 
that we have a new heart but we have the 
Almighty God residing in that new heart. 
So stupendous was the change which this 
brought to the apostles after the day of 
Pentecost that all men took knowledge of 
them that they had been with Jesus. 
They were clothed upon with a new pow- 
er. They were invested with a divine au- 
thority and efficiency by which their 
words brought conviction to the con- 
sciences of men^and the works of the risen 
Christ were wrought through their hands 
and all men felt a supernatural presence 
and power around them and upon them. 
This double fact of the indwelling Christ 
and the infilling Spirit constituted the 
secret of what we next observe, namely — 

DIVINE HOLINESS. 

VI. A supernatural holiness, for sanc- 
tification is not our personal virtues, 
graces or attainments, but it is the life of 



56 PRESENT TRUTH. 

Christ manifested in us. The finest defi- 
nition of it is given by Paul in the first 
epistle to the Corinthians, i. 30: ^Tor of 
Him are ye in Christ Jesus who of God is 
made unto us wisdom, even righteousness, 
sanctification and redemption. That ac- 
cording as it is written He that glorieth 
let him glory in the Lord.^^ 

Sanctification is here distinctly recog- 
nized not as our character but the inwork- 
ing and the^ outworking of Christ^s own 
life in us. He is made unto us of God our 
righteousness, our sanctification just in 
order that we may not glory in our own 
goodness but may recognize everything we 
are and do as the grace of Christ. 

This is the same thought expressed by 
John in his gospel where he says, ^^Of His 
fulness have we received, even grace for 
grace.^^ That is. His grace gives to us the 
supply which constitutes the different 
graces in us. Do we want humility? We 
take Christ^s Spirit within us to be the 
spirit of humility. Do we want purity? 
We take Christ's purity. Do we want pa- 
tience and love? We put on Christ as our 



THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 57 

patience and love and He works out in us 
and relives through us His own longsuf- 
fering, unselfish life, and out of His ful- 
ness we thus receive even grace for grace 
and when the work is accomplished we do 
not stand before men paragons and pat- 
terns of our superiority to our fellows but 
examples of the free and sovereign grace 
which they may have as well as we. 

Not only does Christ give us a super- 
natural supply but a supernatural stand- 
ard of holiness. In this respect Christi- 
anity differs from all human ethics. Chi- 
nese morality has crystallized itself in a 
proverb not unlike our golden rule though 
not nearly so clear and strong. But even 
the golden rule does not express highest 
standard of New Testament holiness. 
"Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself^ 
is the Old Testament morality; "But a new 
commandment have I given unto you that 
ye should love one another as I have loved 
you.^^ This is the supernatural standard 
of Christianity. "Be ye therefore perfect 
even as your Father which is in heaven is 
perfect.^^ This is an aim transcending 



58 PRESENT TRUTH. 

the highest dream of the world's teachers. 
"Love your enemies. Bless them that per- 
secute you and pray for them that despite- 
fuUy use you.^' 

ThiS;, when exemplified in living obedi- 
ence^ awes the human heart and convicts 
it of a power superhuman and divine. 

DIVINE GUIDANCE. 

yil. Divine guidance is one of the sup- 
ernatural privileges of the Christian life. 
For every consecrated soul God has a dis- 
tinct plan and a divine program lifting it 
above all common lives and making it 
marked and sublime. It may be a very 
simple life and exercised in a very humble 
sphere but the fact that God is shaping, 
molding and using it gives to it a dignity 
unspeakably high. The life of a Joseph, 
the life of an Esther, the life of a Paul is 
a romance of Providence, and every one 
of us may possess such a chaimed life and 
know that God has made of us a pattern 
of our earthly temple and is building bet- 
ter than we know. 

When the great Hildebrand was dying 



THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 59 

he told some of his friends that the secret 
of his life was that he had taken St. Peter 
as the patron saint of his whole career and 
that all along the way he felt that the in- 
fluence of this mighty spirit was directing 
all his ways. How mnch better for us to 
take Peter^s Master as the pattern of our 
life and let Him so possess it that He well 
have a loving pride in making out of us 
the very best possible for a trusting soul 
and a human career. 

PEOYIDENCE. 

yill. Along with this it may be added 
that divine providence enters directly into 
the life of the child of God. Especially 
is this true when our whole life is dedi- 
cated to God and conformed to His high 
calling. Then for us the promise becomes 
true ^^AU things work together for good 
to them that love God^ to them that are 
the called according to His purpose." 
This is not true in the same sense of every 
Christian but only of those who are living 
according to His purpose as stated in the 
context to be conformed to the image of 
His Son. 



60 PRESENT TRUTH. 

If that is the character of our life and 
if we thus truly love and live for God with 
the singleness and strength of an undivid- 
ed heart we shall find that all the wheels 
of Providence move at the touch of the 
hand that is leading us. 

How wonderful the story of providence 
in God^s Word and especially in the lives 
of those who truly belonged to God. How 
He ruled and overruled in the story of 
Joseph, of Moses, of JsTehemiah, of Daniel, 
of Philip in his meeting with the eunuch 
in the desert, of Paul in his missionary 
journeys, of Peter in his marvellous de- 
liverance from prison while his pursuer 
was stricken in the same hour by the hand 
of God. How inadequately we realize 
and claim that overshadowing promise 
that covers all our way, "All power is giv- 
en unto Me in heaven and in earth and lo, 
I am with you always even unto the end 
of the age.^^ How often we forget that 
the affairs of nations and even the busi- 
ness of the world moves simply for the 
sake of Christ and His people. "He is 
head over all things for His body, the 



THE SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 61 

church/^ Our vast political systems 
and commercial activities are but the 
agencies through which He is preparing 
the way for the witnessing of the Gospel 
and the evangelization of the world. Oh, 
to ride forth with Him in His chariot and 
see Him triumph over all our enemies and 
His! This is the supernatural privilege 
of the sons of God and the service of 
Christ. 

THE MYSTEEY OF PRAYER. 

IX. There is no wonder more supernat- 
ural and divine in the life of the believer 
than the mystery and the ministry of 
prayer. See yonder mighty statesman 
turning away from his official task and 
the courtly visitors that await for him 
from one hundred and twenty provinces 
and for three whole weeks prostrate on his 
face in prayer before the throne of a great- 
er King than Cyrus. See him reading the 
prophecy of Jeremiah and praying for its 
fulfillment in the restoration of Jeru- 
salem, and lo, as he prays, earth^s might- 
iest conqueror is unable to sleep. He 



62 PRESENT TRUTH. 

calls for the Archives of his kingdom and 
the records respecting these very Jews, 
and when the morning dawns sends for 
his scribe and he dictates this decree, 
namely, ^^All the kingdoms of the earth 
hath the Lord God of Heaven given me, 
and He hath charged me to build Him an 
house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah. 
Who is there among yon of all His people? 
The Lord, his God, be with Him and let 
him go up/^ 

How did this heathen conqueror know 
about the Lord Jehovah? What did he 
care for IsraeFs God? What cared he for 
fear or favor respecting the little captive 
hands of Israel in his land? What but a 
touch from the throne could put such a 
thought in his heart or such language on 
his lips? Ah, it was the answer to Dan- 
iel's prayer. It was the moving of a 
sceptre which is touched in the silent clos- 
et and lo, as we gaze we see those captive 
bands arise and starting forth on their 
homeward way with Zerubbabel, Ezra and 
Nehemiah; we see the temple arising from 
its ruins; we see the city walls restored; 



THE SUPERNATURAL I.IFE. 63 

we see the ages roll on until the Son of 
God stands Himself in later times preach- 
ing the Gospel of the kingdom; and the 
vision given Daniel in answer to his pray- 
er does not close until the latest ages have 
all rolled by and the course of empires is 
finished and the vision of prophecy ful- 
filled and the times of the Gentiles ended 
and the Lord Himself has come. 

Wonder of wonders! Mysteries of mys- 
teries! Miracle of miracles! The hand 
of the child touching the arm of the 
Father and moving the wheels of the uni- 
verse. Beloved, this is your supernatural 
place and mine and over its gates we read 
this inspiring invitation ^^Thus saith Je- 
hovah, call unto Me and I will answer thee 
and show thee great and mighty things 
which thou knewest not/^ 



\ 



THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 

"Christ loved the Church and gave Him- 
self for it that He might sanctify and cleanse 
it by the washing of water and the Word 
that He might present it to Himself a glori- 
ous church, not having a spot or wrinkle or 
any such thing, but that it should be holy 
and without blemish." Eph. v. 25-27. 

There is a social and collective element 
in our human life and therefore Christi- 
anity involves not only a supernatural 
man but a divine society. Adam repre- 
sented the race as a whole and Christ also 
has a people who are bound together by 
certain ties of life and fellowship and 
united under certain common character- 
istics as an organic whole. 

Early in the story of the human race 
we find humanity divided into two great 
societies. One is called the sons and 
daughters of men developing in the fam- 
ily of Cain, the other the sons of God con- 
nected with the family of Seth. 



THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 65 

THE FIRST CHURCH. 

Irnmediately after these two lines sep- 
arate we find this remarkable statement in 
Gen. iv. 26, ^^Then began men to call up- 
on the name of the Lord.^^ More correct- 
ly this passage may be translated^ ^^Then 
began men to call themselves by the name 
of the Lord.^^ This was the organization 
of a divine society and it was organized 
with a divine name. They called them- 
selves by the very name of the Lord as 
God^s own especial people. 

THE FIRST CHRISTIANS. 

In beautiful harmony with this we find 
in the early chapters of the ISTew Testa- 
ment that the society of believers also 
took a special name. This was the name 
of Christ. ^^The disciples were called 
Christians first at Antioch'^ and it has 
been happily suggested by one that this 
name was probably given not merely by 
the world around them but assumed by 
themselves as linking them more closely 
and directly with Christ. They were a 
divine society — Christ ones, literally. 



66 PRESENT TRUTH. 

THE CHUKCH DIVINE. 

Now^ the church of Jesus Christ is a 
divine society and there is no truth more 
needing emphasis in these days of com- 
proinise than the supernatural character 
and destiny of the church of the Lord 
Jesus Christ Himself announced its heav- 
enly character before He left the world, 
as, referring to His own divinity, He de- 
clared, ^^On this rock will I build My 
church and the gates of hell shall not pre- 
vail against it.^^ 

In the later teachings of the Holy 
Ghost through the inspired apostles the 
doctrine of the church is unfolded with 
great fulness and the fundamental prin- 
ciples of this divine society are brought 
out with great clearness under the three 
striking figures of the building, the body 
and the bride. 

A DIVINE HEAD. 

I. The church has a divine Head. 
^^Other foundation can no man lay than 
that is laid which is Jesus Christ.'^ So 
intimately is He connected with it that in 



THE SUPEKNATURAL CHURCH. 67 

the twelfth chapter of First Corinthians, 
the great chapter of the church, it is even 
called by His very name, not the church 
of Christ, but Christ. (I Cor. xii. 12). 
^^As members of that one body being 
many are one body, so also is Christ.^^ 
He identifies Himself here with the 
church just as a man is identified with his 
OAvn body. No human name is big enough 
to denominate the church. No single 
doctrine is important enough to give name 
and character to the church of Christ. 
Methods have their place but that place is 
not important enough to constitute a 
Methoditst church. Baptism is very dear 
to every believer in his Bible but baptism 
is not near enough the centre to justify 
the establishment of the Baptist church. 
Presbyterianism recognizes the equality of 
the ministry but even this is not of suf- 
ficient consequence to substitute for the 
name of Jesus the name of Presbyterian. 
Episcopacy recognizes the dignity of the 
bishop and the sacredness of the govern- 
ment of the church but an Episcopal 
church is a lower name than the .dignity 
of Christ's church demands. 



^S PBESENT TRUTH. 

It is well for us to recognize in the life 
and felloTTsliip of Christ all these sec- 
tions of the circle but it would be much 
more to the honor of Christ if all were 
lost in His all-glorious name. He is the 
head of the church. He alone should 
govern and control it. He alone should 
be its end and aim^ and all in all. 

A DITIXE COXSTITUTIOX. 

II. The church has a divine constitu- 
tion. •'See that thou make everything 
according to the pattern shown thee on 
the mount^^ was the law of the ancient 
tabernacle and it applies to the church of 
which that tabernacle was the type. 

Man cannot construct a church accord- 
ing to his theories and preferences. God 
has settled the question of its worship, 
ordinances and membership^ and any so- 
ciety which claims to be a church and 
is not founded upon a regenerated mem- 
bership, the inspiration of the Word and 
the supernatural presence, power and au- 
thority of the Lord Jesus Christ, may 
be a Sunday Club or a literary Lyceum. 



THE SUPEENATXJRAL CHURCH. 69 

but it is not the church of the Lord Jesus 
Christ. 

III. The church has 

A SUPERNATURAL LIFE. 

We must be born into the church. We 
cannot be added to it. We are added to 
Him as the passage in Acts literally 
should be translated^ and that adds us to 
the church. 

IN THE SPIRIT. 

^^By one Spirit/^ or rather, "In one 
Spirit are we all baptized into one body, 
whether we be Jews or Gentiles, whether 
we be bond or free, and have been all 
made to drink into one Spirit.^^ It is not 
only by the Holy Ghost, but in the Holy 
Ghost that we are united to the church. 
A simple figure will illustrate the differ- 
ence between the two propositions: 

That ship in the sea is connected with 
the sea, but not part of it. They are dis- 
tinct substances. But it is very different 
with that mighty river, the Hudson, which 
this moment is flowing into the sea and 
is now merged in the sea. The Hudson 



70 PEESENT TRUTH. 

is part of the sea. It is blended with it. 
They are one. 

That is the way we become members 
of the church. We partake of the com- 
mon life of the body through the Holy 
Ghost. 

BOEN OUT OF CHRIST. 

This was brought out in the typical 
story of Eve^s birth and bridal. She was 
made out of Adam with a common life, 
and then she was given back to Adam 
to be his bride. 

So the church is born out of Christ^s 
life, and then put back in Christ^s arms 
as His beloved. 

Nothing less than this supernatural life 
can ever constitute true membership in 
Christ^s church. Sacraments will not do 
it. Subscriptions to the church funds 
will not do it. Official position will not 
do it. Imposition of hands and rites of 
ordination or confirmation will not do it. 
It is a heaven-born oneness — a unity of 
life. 

In the church at Ephesus there was a 



THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 71 

fine organiaztion; there was a great deal 
of work. There was a great zeal for or- 
thodoxy and a deliberate hunting down 
of heretics; but, notwithstanding all this. 
Christ was so grieved and even disgusted 
that He was about to remove the candle- 
stick of Ephesus out of its place simply 
because they had left their first love and 
their life, as He literally expressed it re- 
pecting another of these churches was 
^^ready to die.'^ 

A SUPEKNATUKAL OBJECT. 

IV. The church has a supernatural ob- 
ject. She is not an earthly kingdom, but 
a heavenly people. As truly as her Mas- 
ter can she say, "My kingdom is not of 
this world.^^ What has she to do with 
vast endowments, social preeminence, par- 
liaments of religion, mayoralty contests, 
political campaigns and royal patronage? 
It is hers to go up from the wilderness 
leaning upan the arm of her Beloved. It 
is the mark of the false, earthly, apostate 
church that she is seen sitting on the 
beast of earthly power, allied to the arm 



72 PKESENT TRUTH. 

of flesh, and bearing as her seal the boast- 
ful legend, ^^She sits supreme over all the 
world/^ 

ECCLESIASTICAL PRIDE. 

The beginning of the great apostacy 
was the ambition of the first prelates and 
bishops of the early church to have the 
foremost place in the banquets of the 
Emperor, and that little strife about who 
should go in first to dinner or stood in 
the church was the beginning of the very 
papacy itself. 

Alas! even in our democratic age the 
bribe of the world^s favor and the popu- 
lar applause of the multitude has proved 
as fatal to the churches purity and left 
her, alas! with Laodicea, which means to 
^^please the people,^^ basking in the smiles 
of the world, but standing on the very 
verge of the awful and impending Judg- 
ment of her indignant and insulted Lord. 

What are the great objects of the 
Church of Christ? First, to worship God 
and glorify her Father in heaven. Sec- 
ondly, to bear witness to the truth. She 



THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 73 

is called the pillar and crown of truth — 
that is^ as the pillar supports the archway 
with its inscription, so the church is called 
to uphold the great archway of revelation 
and hold before the world the testimony 
of God. And therefore her heavenly ob- 
ject is propagation, evangelization, to 
gather to her bosom the sinful world, to 
instruct and build them up in the life of 
Jesus, to be the training school for heaven 
and to give the Gospel to all mankind. 
This is her heavenly calling. She is the 
only divine society on earth, the only in- 
stitution that is essential, eternal and will 
survive the wreck of time and the disso- 
lution of the present age. Let us under- 
stand her high calling, and, oh, let her 
be true to it! 

SUPERNATURAL POWER. 

y. The church is endowed with super- 
natural powers. To her is given the bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost. In her abides 
the living heart of Christ while the Head 
sits upon the mediatorial throne controll- 
ing all things for her good. 



74 PRESENT TRUTH. 

Christianity differs in this from all 
other systems. Each of them had a head, 
but the heart is cold in death. The heart 
of Christianity is the Holy Ghost living 
still in all the omnipotence of God in the 
bosom of the church and quickening her 
with her Master's risen life. It is He 
that uses her testimony to convict the 
world of sin and righteousness and judg- 
ment. It is He who clothes her messages 
with the power of God unto salvation to 
everyone that believeth. It is He who 
gives wisdom to her leaders and eflS.ciency 
to her plans. It is His presence that 
separates her from all other societies, and 
makes this her distinguishing glory, as 
Moses said of Israel of old. Her objeiit 
is not to lean on mighty intellects or large 
wealthy, powerful organizations, but upon 
the living God. 

And He has clothed her with super- 
natural powers in the physical realm. 
When John sent to Jesus for the creden- 
tials of His ministry the answer given 
was, "Go and tell John the things ye see 
and hear; the blind receive their sight. 



THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 75 

the deaf hear, the dead are raised, the 
poor have the Gospel preached unto 
them/^ These are still Christ^s confirma- 
tory signs for His true church. God for- 
give her for having so long surrendered 
them! God help her to reclaim them in 
these last days, to keep them in their true 
place and yet never to ignore them. They 
are like the jewels on KebekaVs robes — 
the earthly insignia of Isaac^s love. Her 
robe is holiness; her jewels are the gifts 
of power. 

ALL FOKMS OF MINISTKY. 

Christ intended that His Church 
should embrace all forms of ministry for 
all classes of need — the sick, the orphan, 
the stranger, the poor, the ignorant, the 
lost. Oh, for the revival of apostolic and 
primitive church life! Oh, for the vision 
of the woman clothed with the sun. 
crowned with stars and the moon, the 
lower light of earth^s midnight, under her 
feet! 

A SUPERNATURAL SUPPORT. 

VI. The church has a supernatural 



76 PEESENT TRUTH. 

support. The ascended Christ with all 
the resources of His providential govern- 
ment is her Head and Lights and as He 
sends her forth her all sufl&cient guaran- 
tee is this^ "All power is given unto Me 
and lo;, I am with yon always. The bride 
of the Lamb^ the co-heir of all His bound- 
less wealthy what business has she to go 
about with her hat in her hand begging 
the petty pittance of their gifts from the 
brewers^ distillers^ gamblers and specula- 
tors of the earthy selling tickets for straw- 
berry festivals, broom drills and inde- 
scribable follies of every kind and vainly 
competing with the literary lecture bu- 
reau or with the cheap theatre for plat- 
form entertainments to draw the masses, 
and sometimes stoop even to the promis- 
cuous dance to attract visitors to her Sun- 
day school picnic or help out the de- 
ficiency in the preacher^s salary. God 
convict her and God deliver her! 

A SUPERNATUKAL DESTINY. 

VII. The church has supernatural des- 
tiny. Her calling is to be the glorious 



THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 77 

church, and, some day, when He presents 
her to Himself not having spot, or 
wrinkle, nor any such thing, bright with 
all the glory of the Apocalypic visioi; ol 
the new Jerusalem, brightest of all with 
the reflected light and beauty of her 
Bridegroom and her Head, she will be the 
wonder of the universe; and they shall 
come from every star to gaze upon her 
while the attendant angels shall say. 
^^Come, until I show you the bride, the 
Lanib^s wife. 

THE VISION OF THE FUTURE. 

A beautiful old legend intimates that in 
the very centre of man^s first paradise was 
a temple of gems, where Adam wor- 
shipped God in the days of his unfajlen 
innocence. Its floor was of shining gold 
and its walls were of carbuncles, jaspers, 
rubies, emeralds and amethysts; its dome 
was a blazing diamond, but in the ruin of 
the fall that temple was torn to fragments 
and all the pieces scattered over the earth, 
and today we^find them in little broken 
gems in the hearts of the mountains and 



78 PRESENl TBUTH. 

in the depths of ocean. But bye and bye, 
the legend tells us, in the age to come 
they are to be crystallized again into a 
yet more glorious temple, the vision of 
John, the new Jerusalem. 

Well, whatever the legend amounts to. 
at least, we know that the children of 
God today are scattered, like jewelled 
fragments, in every race and clime, but 
they are gems of unparalelled precious- 
ness and value. Next to Christ, the most 
precious thing on earth, is Chrisf s people. 

A GLORIOUS CHUECH. 

As we think of those we have known 
and loved in the precious fellowship of 
Jesus we do not wonder that the Master 
died for them and that they have often 
gladly died for each other. Oh, how 
glorious they will be when ^^the righteous 
shall shine forth as the sun in the king- 
dom of their Father.^^ 

All our work here is but imperfect. 
Builders are like Solomon^s workmen in 
the mountains sending off one by one the 
stones and timbers, but not seeing the 



THE SUPERNATURAL CHURCH. 79 

building yet. Bye and bye it shall rise in 
silent majesty as yonder temple rose, and 
as we look upon its stately splendor, its 
external foundations, its celestial towers, 
its glorious brightness, its supernal light, 
we shall not be sorry for the toils and 
tears we gladly gave and the song we often 
sang: 

I love Thy kingdom, Lord, 

The house of Thine abode. 
The church our blessed Redeemer bought 

With His own precious blood. 

THE HOLY CATHOLIC CHUKCH. 

In conclusion, let us never dwarf the 
glorious conception of the Church of Je- 
sus by identifying it only with our little 
sectarian conceptions. Let us love and 
cherish every branch of the true church 
of God, but let us rise above them all to 
the divine conception, and in all our fel- 
lowships, associations and alliances let us 
steadily hold that great communion of 
saints which is part of the Apostle^s Creed 
and the eternal hope. Some one has hap- 
pily said: ^^We are not come outers. We 



80 PRESENT TRUTH. 

are come uppers and go outers/^ Stripped 
of its colloquialism it just means, lift the 
church higher and carry the Gospel fur- 
ther to a d3dng world, and so haste the 
day when He shall come to the general 
assembly and church of the first born ones 
who are written in heaven, to the new 
Jerusalem and innumerable company of 
angels, to God, the Judge of all, and the 
spirits of just men made perfect/^ 



\ 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 

"If the spirit of Him that raised up Jesus 
from the dead dwell in you, He that raised 
up Christ from the dead shall also quicken 
your mortal bodies by His spirit that dwell- 
eth in you." Rom. viii. 8. 

The redemption of the body is an ac- 
cepted truth of Christianity. The chief 
difference- among Christians is with re- 
spect to the extent of its application. 
Many believe that this part of our redemp- 
tion is only to be realized at the close of 
the present age in the translation and 
resurrection at the coming of our Lord. 
Others of us have been led to believe that 
we anticipate in the present life to a cer- 
tain extent the power of our future resur- 
rection, and that we have a foretaste of 
this part of our salvation here even as we 
have a foretaste of heaven. 

THE EAKNEST. 

This, we believe, is what is meant by 



82 PKESENT TRUTH. 

the use of the word ^^earnest^^ or "first 
fruits^^ applied in several instances in re- 
lation to the work of the Holy Ghost in 
our bodies. An earnest is a first instal- 
ment^ a pledge in kind of the thing which 
is afterward to be given in full. As the 
earnest of our spiritual future gives us in 
our spirit the foretaste of the heavenly 
glory but as the earnest of the resurrec- 
tion of the body He gives us the physical 
life of Christ in our mortal body and an- 
ticipates in our material form now as far 
as we are able to receive it that which we 
shall enjoy in boundless fulness in the 
body of glory in the ages to come. 

An earnest is the very same in kind but 
less in degree than that of which it is the 
pledge. Therefore if the Holy Ghost is 
to be the earnest of our physical resurrec- 
tion it must be through some physical 
operation in our being now. 

We believe that we shall have a super- 
natural body in the heavenly world but 
we also believe that we begin to receive 
the elements of that body now, if not its 
form at least its vital element and the 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 83 

hidden power which is to animate it then. 

We are always putting forward God's 
blessings to some future time instead of 
accepting them now. We are like poor 
Martha who, when our Lord had said to 
her, "Thy brother shall rise again'' timid- 
ly pushed it forward to the distant future 
and answered, "I know he shall rise again 
at the last day." Jesus gently reproved 
her error and answered quickly, "I am the 
resurrection and the life." As if He had 
said, Martha, do not postpone the blessing 
your faith would claim but take him for it 
now. The resurrection when it comes 
will come through Me and where I am 
there is the power of the resurrection. I 
am speaking to you in the present tense. 
I have for you a present blessing, and 
then He proceeds to expand the thought 
in every direction that we have been ex- 
plaining. "Verily I say unto you, he that 
believeth in Me though he were dead yet 
shall he live and he that believeth in Me 
shall live and never die." 

He seems clearly to teach us that be- 
lieving in Him we receive the life which 



84 PRESENT TRUTH. 

passes through death to us^ or, rather 
rises above it and lives on forever tunnell- 
ing the dark of the tomb and passing on in 
unbroken, uninterrupted being into the 
larger life beyond. 

This then is the truth which we desire 
to unfold from the Holy Scriptures, that 
we may possess even now, through the 
Lord Jesus Christ a measure of super- 
natural life and strength in our mortal 
frame sufficient to enable us for all the 
pressures and duties of this life and sus- 
tain us until our life work is done. 

THE EDEN. 

I. We see some foreshadowings of this 
great truth in the story of the fall. In 
consequence of sin man was instantly de- 
barred from the tree of life which was the 
symbol and source of his physical immor- 
tality. But while this supply of perpetual 
physical life was withdrawn it was not for- 
ever precluded, for God erected at the gate 
of Eden a glorious medium of approach to 
His presence described as the cherubim 
and the Flaming Sword which turned 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 85 

every way to keep the way of the tree of 
life. This symbolical figure of the Cher- 
ubim and the Sword we do not believe are 
emblems of divine judgment so much as 
of divine mercy. The Hebrew verb here 
is Shekinah, literally He shekinahed the 
Cherubim and Flaming Sword. We know 
that the Shekinah and the Cherubim as 
they re-appear in the later symbols of the 
tabernacle were tokens of the divine mercy 
and Jehovah^s covenant with Israel and 
we cannot but think that the fiery sword 
was some supernatural light, perhaps the 
Shekinah itself which indicated the pres- 
ence of God and the blessing on the wor- 
ship. 

That which we have associated with 
terror and repulsion was the first gate of 
mercy open for fallen man and the sense 
in which it was to keep the way of the 
tree of life might more properly be ex- 
pressed by using the word guard. It was 
to guard the way and to guide the way 
to the tree of life. From that tree sinful 
man was debarred on the natural plane, 
but he could now approach it on the high- 



86 PRESENT TRUTH. 

er plane of grace. His physical life was 
forfeited by his fall^ but it could be won 
back again by the great redemption of 
which that cherubic sign was the glori- 
ous symbol. 

We get back our lost strength now, not 
through nature but through the super- 
natural, not through the toil of Eden or 
the efforts of the flesh but through the 
Lord Jesus Christ, our redeeming Lord 
and our Living Head. 

SARAH AND ABRAHAM. 

II. Coming down the line of divine rev- 
elation we next meet with a distinct rec- 
ognition of the supernatural life of God 
in our bodies in the story of Abraham, 
Sarah and Isaac. Here the strength of 
nature was allowed to fail before the seed 
of promise could be born. It was some- 
thing like a foreshadowing of the birth of 
the Son of God which was not in a natural 
but in a supernatural way. Isaac, the 
seed of promise and the first type of the 
coming One could not come into life until 
the natural life of his parents had with- 



I 



THE SUPEKNATURAL BODY. 87 

ered and by a directly supernatural touch 
God gave new life even to their bodies. 

This is what is meant by the description 
given by Paul of Abraham^s faith. We 
are told that he considered his body as 
good as dead without being discouraged 
for he was strong in faith giving glory to 
God and looking directly to Him^ by sup- 
ernatural means^ to make good that for 
which nature had now no resources. 
Could there be a more signal and emphatic 
object lesson of the fact that God would 
lift the hearts of His people to a divine 
source even for the strength of our mor- 
tal frame? Could there be a more strik- 
ing foreshadowing of the supernatural 
body which Christ has been preparing for 
the members of His mystical body? 

ISRAELIS HISTORY. 

III. The story of Israel was a signifi- 
cant illustration of the supernatural physi- 
cal life which God can give His children. 
All through the wilderness they were 
physically sustained by directly divine 
agencies. The very symbol of their life 



88 PBESEKT TRUTH. 

was a burning bush burning up and not 
consumed. Like the first miracle of 
Christ at Cana of Galilee which was a 
sort of type of all the objects of His re- 
deeming work setting forth in a striking 
figure the outcome of the earthly and the 
substitution of the new life. So this 
great sign which preceded Israelis call out 
of Egypt embodied in itself the idea of 
tremendous pressure overcome by infinite 
strength and Divine protection. This was 
the story of the chosen people all the way 
through. 

Indeed^ Moses himself in reviewing it 
tells us that the very object of God in 
leading them as He did along that pilgrim 
way was to show them and teach them 
that man should not live by bread alone 
but by every word that proceedeth out of 
the mouth of God. It was to illustrate 
this idea of a supernatural physical life 
while walking with God and drawing our 
life directly from Him. 

As this is true of the nation as a whole 
so it was also true of the most prominent 
individuals in the nation. Therefore we 



THE SUPERNATUEAL BODY. 89 

see that Moses^ own life was distinctly 
supernatural. He began his great work at 
the age of eighty when most men would 
be writing their will and preparing for 
their funeral^ and at the age of one hun- 
dred and twenty, we are told that his eye 
was not dimmed nor his natural force 
abated but he calmly climbed a lofty 
mountain and in his full maturity stepped 
into the chariot of God and passed in vic- 
torious strength and voluntary surrender 
into the glory. 

CALEB. 

So the life of Caleb was also supernatu- 
ral. Surely he had enough to break his 
heart and wear out his life in the striv- 
ings of a gainsaying peopoe who kept him 
nearly half a century out of the promised 
land. But, when an old man of eighty- 
four, we behold him standing before Josh- 
ua and asking as the choicest privilege of 
his life the opportunity of leading an as- 
sault upon the stronghold of the Canaan- 
ites, the old citadel of Hebron, and de- 
claring, "I am as strong this day as when 



90 PBESENT TRUTH. 

1 came out of the land of Egypt both to 
go out and come in. The Lord hath kept 
me all these years because I wholly fol- 
lowed the Lord my God.^^ He attributes 
his whole physical strength to the bless- 
ing of God and the blessed results of obed- 
ience and fidelity. 

SAMSON. 

IV. But God has given us a still more 
distinct object lesson of this great prin- 
ciple of the supernatural body in the won- 
derful story of Samson. The one pur- 
pose of his life seems to have been to illus- 
trate the connection between physical 
strength and rightness with God. When 
true to his Nazarite vow of separation and 
filled with the Spirit of God he was a 
giant of unequalled muscular might. But 
when he broke his sacred vow of separa- 
tion and lost the Holy Ghost he became 
as weak as tow and sank helpless in the 
hands of his foes. Probably he did not 
lose an ounce of weight but he lost the 
secret of his strength^ the life of the Holy 
Ghost. It is not the size of that wire that 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 91 

constitutes its strength. A little hair wire 
filled with an electric current is mightier 
than one of the cedars of Lebanon. It is 
the fluid that sweeps through it that 
makes it strong. 

And so the supernatural life in which 
God is leading those who are willing to 
learn and to follow is not the result of 
physical culture but is the unfolding of 
the divine life and the anticipation of the 
unseen forces of the world to come. 

DAVID. 

y. The same great principle is illus- 
trated in the story of David who constant- 
ly recognized his military prowess, his 
courage and the strength of his victorious 
arm as due to the touch of God. He was 
clothed with a supernatural body and he 
could say of Jehovah, ^^He teacheth my 
hands to war so that a bow of steel is 
broken by mine arms.^^ ^^Who healeth all 
my diseases. Who redeemeth my life 
from destruction. Who satisfieth my 
mouth with good things so that my youth 
is renewed like the eagle's." 



92 PKESENT TRUTH. 

Christ's temptations. 
VI. But as we turn to the New Testa- 
ment the very first view we obtain of the 
Lord Jesus Christy our Great Teacher and 
Example is in this very connection. We 
see Him standing in the wilderness yonder 
going through His first conflict with Satan 
and living out for us that great object les- 
sons of our own life. What was the very 
first of these temptations? It was a phys- 
ical one, the temptation to secure His 
bodily strength from human sources. 
And how did he meet it? By the very 
passage we have already quoted from 
Deuteronomy, by the very lesson he had 
learned from the story of Israel in the 
wilderness. The devil was trying to per- 
suade him that He must get out of this 
strait by some means and that He must 
resort to earthly measures of relief and 
He replied by telling Satan, ''Man shall 
not live by bread alone but by every word 
that proceedeth from the mouth of God.'' 
He did not deny the place of the human 
and the earthly in supporting the life of 
man but He did protest against being de- 



I 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 93 

pendent upon the human and the earthly. 

Bread has its true place but it is not 
^^bread alone.^^ There is something more 
for a man to say than ^^I must live.^^ The 
true thing to say is ^^I must meet God in 
my trial, I must learn my lesson, I must 
accomplish the purpose for which He has 
brought me here, and the purpose for 
which He has brought me here is to show 
that He is all sufficient even for my body. 
I must stand there until this purpose is 
fulfilled. I must throw myself upon Him 
until He gives me relief and deliverance.^^ 

And so He refused the deviPs prescrip- 
tion and waited in reliance upon the life 
that comes from the mouth of God. And 
lo, in a little while we see the angels min- 
istering to Him. First the Father min- 
istered the divine life and then the angels 
ministered the natural bread. 

It is very significant that in this quo- 
tation Christ does not say the Son of Man 
but He says ^^man.^^ It is very plain that 
He means the lesson for all His disciples. 
It is for us as well as Him. 

It is true there is danger of extremes. 



94 PRESENT TRUTH. 

All truth has its possibility of extrava- 
gance. There is a reckless disregard of 
the natural. God does not mean to teach 
us that. There is a place for food and 
sleep but we have not learned to enjoy 
that rightly until we have also learned 
that God can strengthen us when need be 
even without them. 

Beloved, is not our trouble this that in 
the hour of testing we are more anxious 
to be delivered than to meet God^s thought 
and glorify God^s grace. What Christ 
was concerned for in that conflict was not 
so much to get bread as to show the all- 
sufficiency of God and stand obedient to 
His Father's will, trusting implicitly His 
Father^s love. 

THE LIVING BREAD. 

VII. Our blessed Lord has taught us 
this deep spiritual truth in one of His 
most profound discourses and left for our 
guidance through the Christian age the 
great principle on which He Himself built 
His own life and overcame the assault of 
the enemy in His body. That discourse 



J 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 95 

was so marked in its teachings, so deep 
and heart-searching in its scope that the 
most of His disciples were unable to ac- 
cept it and, indeed, with the exception of 
the twelve the whole of His Galilean flock 
grew tired of such deep teaching and ut- 
terly deserted Him on account of it. ^^t 
is a hard saying, they replied, who can 
hear it.'' 

That sermon was the wonderful dis- 
course given about the Living Bread in 
the sixth chapter of the Gospel of John. 
The one thought that pervades it is that 
we are to draw our lives both spiritually 
and physically directly from the Lord 
Jesus even as He draws His strength from 
the Father. Its one keynote is the pro- 
found verse, ^^As the Living Father has 
sent Me and I live by the Father, even 
so he that eateth Me shall live by Me.'' 

By eating Him He explains explicitly 
that He means taking His flesh and blood 
as the source of our life and strength, and 
He tells us that this will give us an eter- 
nal life, life that will flow on even until 
the resurrection, for He adds in connec- 



96 PRESENT TRUTH. 

tion with it^ ^^I will raise Him up at the 
last day/^ As the babe lives upon its 
mother^s life the believer lives on Jesus' 
and the profound words become more 
true than any language can express^ ^"^In 
Him we live and move and have our be- 
ing." 

PAULAS SUPERXATUEAL LIFE. 

VIII. But this profound truth receives 
its deepest^ largest unfolding in the later 
teachings of the Holy Ghost through the 
ministry and example of the apostle Paul. 
It runs like a golden pipe from the heav- 
enly fountain through all His teachings 
and experience. 

With great vividness He unfolds the 
doctrine of our union with Jesus Christ, 
our Living Head. "We are members/' 
He says^ "of His body, His flesh and His 
bones.'' "The Lord is for our body and 
the body is for the Lord." "Our bodies 
are the members of Christ and the temples 
of the Holy Ghost." The "Spirit that 
dwells within us quickens our mortal 
bodies." This certainly cannot mean our 



THE SUPERNATUEAL BODY. 97 

future body as it shall be raised from the 
tomb. It is the "death doomed body^^ as 
Eotherham happily translates it^ the body 
in which the Spirit is now dwellings liable 
to death, but not yet dead; and divinely 
equipped, exhilarated, renewed by the in- 
dwelling life of the Holy Ghost. 

In the fourth chapter of Second Cor- 
inthians He unfolds this doctrine of the 
supernatural body more fully than any- 
where else. There he tells us that His 
natural life is constantly exposed to death 
in order that the life also of Jesus might 
be made manifest in his mortal flesh. 

This life of Jesus is something more 
distinct from and far transcending his own 
natural life. When they dragged him 
through the streets of Lystra and hurled 
him on the pavements as one dead the life 
of Paul was about gone, but it was then 
that the "life also of Jesus'^ came to his 
relief and as the disciples stood around 
him in prayer and his own sinking heart 
was lifted up to heaven, there came a 
touch of divine quickening and he rose 
upon his feet and went forth again to his 



98 PRESENT TRUTH. 

work on the borrowed strength of heaven. 

An so he went through life, not strong 
in himself but having the "treasure in an 
earthly vessel that the excellency of the 
power might be of God and not of him." 
And so, quoting from the fine translation 
of Eotherham, he adds "On every side we 
are pressed hard but not hemmed in; 
without a way but not without a by-way; 
pursued but not abandoned; thrown down 
but not destroyed, at all times the putting 
to death of Jesus in the body bearing 
about; that the life also of Jesus in our 
body might be made manifest." 

Space and time will not permit us to 
follow at greater length this sublime 
thought. We will only add one other il- 
lustration of it in his reference to the 
thorn in the flesh which is perplexing so 
many inquirers and expounders. 

Paul's thorn. 

Now the principle we have been unfold- 
ing supplies the very solution of this diffi- 
cult case. Supposing for the time that 
PauFs thorn was a physical disease, which 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 99 

we gravely doiibt^ and was not literally re- 
moved in answer to his prayer, still the 
fact would remain that something was 
given to Paul in exchange which was bet- 
ter for him than if it had been removed, 
something in kind which really supplied 
the place of its removal. He calls it the 
power of Christ. It was not the comfort 
and consolation of Christ^s love. It was 
not patience to bear it but it was actually 
power through which he was enabled to 
do more than if the thorn had been taken 
away so that he could say a little later 
"truly the signs of an apostle were 
wrought among you in all patience, in 
signs, and wonders and mighty deeds/^ 
II Cor. xii. 12. He actually affirmed 
while this thorn was still remaining "when 
I am weak, then am I strong.^^ 

Assuming then that it was a physical in- 
firmity and that it was not taken away yet 
it was perfectly certain that something 
was given to him that constituted real 
strength, ample strength, superior strength 
to even his own perfect soundness and 
health. 



loo PHESENl^ TRUTH. 

This is the very thing of which we have 
been speaking. It was an invisible life. 
It was a supernatural source of vitality. 
It was not a bigger wire^ but a stronger 
current through the wire. It was the life 
of Jesus instead of the life of Paul. 

Now this will explain many a perplex- 
ing experience with Divine Healing. 
Your actual physical condition is not al- 
ways taken away but if you would only 
keep looking to Jesus you would find an 
inner strength given to you, a supernat- 
ural spring in the depths of your being, a 
vigor and vitality that made you superior 
to the drain upon you of that depressing 
sj^mptom and carried you in spite of it 
with winged feet through all the pres- 
sures of your physical life. 

God is thus trying to teach us to live in 
the unseen realm, to walk upon the waters 
of the spiritual sphere, nay, to tread the 
seeming void by faith and find a rock 
beneath. 

And so he sums up his sublime argu- 
ment for the supernatural body in the 
fourth chapter of Second Corinthians by 



THE SUPERNATURAL BODY. 101 

that passage which apart from this prin- 
ciple would be obscure^ ^^for which cause 
we faint not, but though our outward man 
is perishing yet the inward man is renewed 
day by day/^ As this whole discussion is 
about the physical life he must mean the 
natural and material sources of our spirit- 
ual strength failing but the hidden and 
divine source within our being renewed 
and strengthened. But he tells us that 
this is only while we look not at the things 
which are seen but at the things which are 
not seen. It is only while we dwell on 
the experience of faith in the immaterial 
realm, in the unseen region where God 
lives and we live with Him having meat 
to eat that the world knows not of, appro- 
priating our very life from the heart of 
the risen Son of God. 

In conclusion this great truth of the 
supernatural body is an intensely prac- 
tical and present truth, for 

ANSWERS UNBELIEF. 

I. It is an answer to the unbelief of the 
age. Professor Tyndale challenged the 



102 PRESENT TRUTH. 

disciples of Christ to produce an actual 
physical miracle. ISTo wise man was rash 
enough to take up that challenge so pre- 
sumptuously made but God took it up. 
From that day there have been literally 
thousands of cases of Divine healing as re- 
markable in many respects as those of the 
apostolic records. 

God wants us today to show the unbe- 
lieving world that His presence and power 
are real on every plane of human life and 
experience and although He will not give 
us signs when we tempt Him by asking 
them yet He will make us signs to the un- 
believing world and confirm His Word 
with signs following if we are faithful to 
the testimony and claim by faith the ful- 
fillment of His own promise. 

ITS SPIEITUAL INFLUENCE. 

2. The experience of a supernatural 
body is a blessed auxiliary to the deeper 
life of the soul. The body is a conducting 
or a non-conducting medium of the Holy 
Ghost in His communications to the spir- 
it, according as it is in harmony with God 



THE SUPERNATLRAL BODY. 103 

or out of actual touch with Him. Some 
one has used the phrase "a converted 
body/^ There are bodies that are divine- 
ly touched and there are others that are 
as cold and gross as the clods of clay be- 
neath our feet. When God has to pass 
through the medium of a coarse physical 
organism to get into the heart there is 
obviously a distinct hindrance. There is 
a great difference between taking your 
dinner on a hot plate or a cold plate. A 
cold plate chills the best dinner ever 
served and so the Holy Spirit wants the 
medium through which He ministers to 
our spirit to be itself spiritual. When 
our whole physical being is permeated 
\vdth the presence of God and the baptism 
of the Holy Spirit we are in more distinct 
touch with God^s thoughts, influence and 
suggestions. Our very environment is 
holy and heavenly and the walls of the 
city are protected from the incursions of 
the enemy as well as the citadel itself. 

Merely natural health and material and 
organs have about them an inborn tenden- 
cy to selfish and even sensual gratification 



104 PRESENT TRUTH. 

but when Christ fills our hearts the very 
desire for unholy things is removed and 
we are saved from innumerable sugges- 
tions of evil that spring from the strong 
sensuous life of those who have never felt 
the touch of God in their mortal frame. 

Divine healing in its deepest and high- 
est senses saves from a thousand liabilities 
to self-indulgence and earthliness of 
thought, feeling and act. Our whole be- 
ing becomes a well tuned instrument on 
which God can play and we learn to glori- 
fy Him in our body which is His while the 
spirit sympathizes with the Divine touch 
in all the lower realms of nature, and every 
avenue of our being is thrown open to the 
unfolding presence of God, so that we can- 
not tell where the body ends and the 
spirit begins, but "Holiness to the Lord^^ 
is written on every fibre of our being. 

ADDS TO OUR POWER. 

3. The experience of this supernatural 
life greatly enhances our efficiency for 
service. Not only does it save us from 
innumerable physical hindrances and 



THE SUPEENATURAL BODY. 105 

sources of selfish misery;, murmuring and 
depression^, not merely does it give us in- 
creased vigor and ability for arduous serv- 
ice and long endurance but the quality of 
the service given by a body that is divine- 
ly touched is much higher. The voice that 
speaks and sings for God has more power 
in its tone and ministers grace more di- 
rectly than if we were merely using an in- 
strument of clay. The feet that are di- 
vinely touched not only go faster to bear 
the messages of God^, but they accomplish 
more directly spiritual results. The grip 
of the hand is different. The grip of the 
hand communicates something which 
could never be expressed without this 
added touch of heaven. 

It is not only the divine message and a 
divine messenger but the very medium 
through which it goes has been spiritual- 
ized and made sacred by being itself 
steeped in the fountains of heavenly life 
and power. 

THE CHURCHES NEED. 

Finally the church of God needs es- 



106 PRESENT TRUTH. 

pecially today a new touch of supernatural 
power in the confirmation of her testi- 
mony to the world and especially to the 
heathen world. 

While, as we have said in a former chap- 
ter, this truth is liable to extravagance 
yet there is even a greater danger of over- 
looking it and sinking to the low plane of 
naturalism and rationalism in giving our 
testimony to mankind. In every age it 
ought still to be true, God also bearing 
them witness both with signs and wonders 
and with divers miracles and gifts of the 
Holy Ghost according to His own will. 
If the Christ of Christianity is the same 
yesterday, today and forever the Chris- 
tianity of Christ ought also to be the same 
yesterday, today and forever. 



^ 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 

"Looking for that blessed hope and the 
glorious appearing of the great God and our 
Savious Jesus Christ." Titus ii. 13. 

"Looking for and hasting unto the coming 
of the day of God." II Peter iii. 12. 

In the opening verses of the chapter in 
Second Peter from which the last of these 
two texts is taken the apostle speaks of a 
school of thinkers who shonld arise in the 
last days and should say ^^Where is the 
promise of His coming for since the fath- 
ers fell asleep all things continue as they 
were from the beginning ?^^ This is but 
another form of expressing the very doc- 
trine which a certain school of philos- 
ophers and scientists are promulgating in 
this very day. 

EVOLUTION. 

It is substantially the principle of the 
doctrine of evolution. Its vital principle 
is this — the things that are have been 



108 PRESENT TRUTH. 

evolved out of similar things in the past 
and they will go on developing into simi- 
lar nnfoldings in the future. There has 
been no real crisis suspending the natural 
order of things and there will be none. 
Therefore^ such a harsh^ strained doctrine 
as that of the interposition of the supreme 
being directly in the future history of this 
planet^ and His advent on the stage of 
earth in personal form does violence to all 
the finest instincts of culture and all the 
established principles of science. 

It is the devil's ot\ti trick of trying to 
reduce everything in the universe to a ra- 
tional basis and eliminate the supernatural 
not only from the past but from the fu- 
ture history of the human race^ and mak- 
ing man and nature all sufficient and all 
in all. 

NATURE A WITNESS. 

Now^ nature itself bears witness against 
this false assumption. The profoundest 
scientists themselves tell us that this 
world carries within its bosom the ele- 
ments of its destruction, and that in the 



4 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 109 

very nature of things there are causes at 
work leading np to a great final catastro- 
phe in the very orbits of the heavenly 
bodies. Humboldt himself^ the prince of 
scientists^ predicted a great terrestrial col- 
lapse at some future period in the lapse of 
ages. As Peter tells us in this passage 
even the recent past of our planet^s history 
bears witness to a tremendous convulsion 
when the flood of waters swept the whole 
human race away^, foreshadowing the 
greater fact yet to come to pass when the 
flood of flame will wrap the world in final 
conflagration. The story of the past has 
not been evolution but revolution and a 
still greater catastrophe looms before us 
in the vision both of nature and of proph- 
ecy. 

OUR INTUITIONS. 

Then besides^ the whole framework of 
our human life bears witness that the pres- 
ent is but an imperfect foreshadowing of 
something greater and more abiding. All 
we feel and see and know today, is but the 
embryo of a boundless future. The deep- 



110 PRESENT TRUTH. 

est instincts of onr nature tell ns of a 
larger sphere^ loftier life and more abid- 
ing home. Here we have scarcely learned 
to love when the grave closes over the ob- 
jects of our affections. Our plans are only 
made when lo, the rude hand of death or 
change solves the vision and defeats the 
project. Life is full of broken columns 
and new made graves. The very creation 
groans for some better day and some great 
Delieverer. Every voice within us seems 
to cry 

Beyond the flight of time, 

Beyond the reign of death, 
There surely is some brighter clixQe 

Where life is not a breath. 
Nor life's affections transient fires 
Whose spark flies upv/ard and expires. 

There is a world above 
Where parting is unknown, 

A long eternity of love 

Formed for the good alone; 

And faith beholds our lost ones here 

Translated to that glorious sphere. 

Thank God the light of revelation is 
clear and cloudless respecting this blessed 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. Ill 

hope. Undimmed and increasing it shines 
from the dawn of revelation to the glori- 
ous consummation. 

THE CHEKUBIM. 

Away back at the gate of Eden the mys- 
tic figure of the cherubim was a type of 
redeemed humanity, first in its glorious 
Head and ultimately in all its members. 
The face of the lion spoke of its kingli- 
ness; the face of the ox its strength; the 
face of the man of its perfect humanness 
and the face of the soaring eagle its lofti- 
ness and union with the divine. All this 
was to be accomplished first in Christ and 
then in His redeemed ones. It was like 
a photograph placed at the gate of Eden 
showing the future glory of his race to 
poor broken-hearted Adam as he went 
forth a fugitive from the paradise that he 
"had lost. 

That is the vision God gives to every 
man who will accept restoration through 
the Lord Jesus Christ. Lost and sinful 
we may be, but some day we will be as 
glorious as our exalted Head. 



112 PRESENT TRUTH. 

ENOCH. 

Next we see this blessed hope as the 
theme which Enoch first preached and 
afterward exemplified. He was the first 
prophet of the second coming and when 
his ministry was finished God bore wit- 
ness to it by taking him away to realize in 
his own person the glorious hope to which 
he had testified. • 

NOAH. 

Noah and the deluge through which he 
passed set forth in figure some of the 
greatest truths connected with the Lord^s 
coming. While Enoch represented the 
translated saints who shall be caught up 
before the storm, Noah represented 
rather the people of Israel who shall pass 
through the tribulation and come out as 
he did on the other side to inherit the new 
earth. The times of Noah were typical 
of the times of the Son of Man and the 
whole story of his supernatural deliverance 
foreshadows the closing days of the Chris- 
tian age. 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 113 

THE PATKIARCHS. 

Abraham in like manner lived under 
the power of this coming age. While he 
received the land of promise in covenant 
yet he himself was a stranger in it and he 
died in faith of an inheritance which he 
should afterwards receive. The very rea- 
son why he so sacredly cherished the only 
spot on the ground he owned in Canaan, 
the cave of Macpelah;, was because it was 
the burial place of his beloved wife and 
the pledge of God^s covenant of the future 
inheritance of the land in the glorious res- 
urrection. God^s promise to him was for 
a thousand generations and it is not hard 
to conclude that those promises must 
yet be far in the future in their ultimate 
complete fulfillment. 

In like manner Joseph showed his faith 
in the Supernatural Hope by giving com- 
mandment concerning his bones when dy- 
ing. He wanted his very dust to have a 
part in the future inheritance of the land 
when he, with the saints of Israel, should 
stand in his lot at the end of days. 



114 PRESENT TRUTH. 

THE PSALMS AND PKOPHETS. 

Time would fail to trace this Hope 
through the Psalms of David and the his- 
tory of the Old Testament prophets. Suf- 
fice it to say that as the old dispensation 
came to its close amid the wreck of Israel 
and the utter failure of humanity to ac- 
complish God^s purpose, the light of the 
better Hope began to shine amid the 
gathering darkness. Isaiah, Ezekiel, Jer- 
emiah, Zechariah and, above all, Daniel 
looked out upon the distant future and 
saw and told the wondrous panorama of 
the ages and the glorious coming of Christ 
which was to be the consummation. Like 
the New Testament the Old closes with a 
grand apocalypse of the future. 

THE TKANSFIGUKATION. 

The ministry of the Lord Jesus Christ 
was crowned at its highest point with a 
sublime object lesson of His own future 
advent. At the very time when He was 
turning from His marvellous work in Gal- 
ilee the last sad journey to the cross, He 
took His disciples with Him to the heights! 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 115 

of Hermon and for one bright lustrous 
hour He let the veil fall from the face of 
His deity and shed forth in all its effulg- 
ence His advent glory. In His own trans- 
figured face and form they saw Him as He 
will come again while in Moses and Elias 
they had the vision, first of the sleeping 
dead as they will be raised and then of 
the living as they will be translated. All 
this, Peter tells us, was a vision of the 
power and coming of the Lord Jesus in- 
tended to cheer his heart and comfort 
others in view of the dark tribulations 
which were just before them. 

LAST DISCOUKSES OF CHRIST. 

In His last discourse, however. He 
formulated the message of His coming 
with great fulness and as He sat upon the 
side of Olivet the last week of His earthly 
life He delivered with great definiteness 
and vididness the successive events of the 
Christian age and especially of its closing 
chapters. These wonderful discourses 
contain the substance of all later proph- 



116 PRESENT TRUTH. 

ecies respecting the advent and are worthy 
of the profonndest study. 

APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY. 

But after Pentecost the Holy Ghost un- 
folded this great truth with greater ful- 
ness. All the apostles are witnesses to it. 
Even on the day of Pentecost they clearly 
pointed out the connection between the 
Holy Ghost and the coining of the Lord. 
The two last promises of Jesus as He went 
away were the baptism of the Spirit and 
His own literal return. One of Peter's 
early sermons referred with great definite- 
ness first to the "times of refreshing^' 
which the Spirit was to bring from the 
presence of the Lord^ and then to the 
"times of restitution'^ which the Lord 
Himself was to bring when the heavens 
which had received Him should give Him 
up for His final advent. 

Paul wrote two of his epistles^, the let- 
ters to the Thessalonians, with special ref- 
erence to this great truth and again and 
again refers to it in all his letters as his 
own blessed inspiration and expectation. 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 117 

Peter tells much of the "blessed hope'" 
and James, the most practical of them all 
and furthest removed from, mysticism or 
dreaming of any sort, tells the struggling 
and oppressed Christians of his day to 
leave their wrongs to be adjusted not by 
trades unions and labor strikes, but by the 
coming of the Lord. And John, nearest 
to the Master^s heart, and latest to give 
out his last messages, closes the sacred 
Canon and seals the Book of inspiration 
with the sublime Apocalypse which is one 
long bright vision of the Lord^s coming 
and the events which precede and fol- 
low it. 

THE OEDER OF TRUTH. 

The order of the New Testament is 
similar to the Old in its general scope and 
structure. There is first the narrative of 
facts; second, the teaching of the deeper 
spiritual truth, and, thirdly, the prophetic 
revelation of the Father. God cannot 
trust us with the glorious doctrine of His 
coming until we are first established in 
the facts of Christianity and in the depths 



118 PKESENT TRUTH. 

of the Spirit. Above all doctrines it is 
the least fitted to play with^ to talk about, 
to lightly hold as a theory. We need to 
be deeply rooted and grounded in Christ 
before we can wisely grasp it or give it 
forth. But after we have received the 
Spirit in His fulness one of His special 
ministries is to show us things to come, to 
open the gates of vision and unfold the 
prophetic Word. 

Now, as the Holy Ghost has revealed 
this glorious hope its supernatural char- 
acter will appear in the following particu- 
lars — 

JESUS HIMSELF. 

I. It will bring a supernatural revela- 
tion of Christ. If we accept the fact that 
the Lord Jesus once resided upon this 
earth as a supernatural man why should 
it be thought strange that He should re- 
visit it and dwell upon it for a longer time 
as its sovereign Lord. Christians of ev- 
ery name believe that the Divine Person 
that once trod this earthly scene is resid- 
ing somewhere now in yonder heavens in 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE, 119 

His actutal and visible personality. It 
would be but a slight transition for Him 
to return in person to the world where 
once He dwelt. Now, this is the common 
sense of the doctrine of the Lord^s com- 
ing. ^"^This same Jesus shall so come 
again in like manner as ye have seen Him 
go into heaven.^^ Of course, His coming 
will be different in this respect, that the 
veil of humiliation which obscured His 
deity during His earthly ministry will be 
forever dropped and He will shine forth 
in all the majesty of His deity and His 
universal lordship. 

HIS APPEAKING VISIBLE. 

That this must mean a literal and vis- 
ible appearing should scarcely need to be 
demonstrated and, had it not been for the 
strange theory of later centuries which 
has been accepted by so large a portion of 
the Christian church and has practically 
explained away the force and meaning of 
this blessed Hope. According to this 
spiritualizing interpretation the promise 
of His coming is substantially fulfilled in 



120 PRESENT TRUTH. 

His personal indwelling in the hearts of 
His people and the triumph of the truths 
and principles of the Gospel among all 
nations. 

NoW;, in reply to the firsts it is enough 
to say that the New Testament apostles 
enjoyed the indwelling of Christ as fully 
as any human being may expect to during 
the Christian age and yet they constantly 
looked forward to an actual coming of 
Christ as the supreme object of their hope. 

In respect to the other, it ought to be 
conclusive to remember that uniformly in 
speaking of Christ^s coming the Holy 
Spirit represents the world at the time of 
His appearing as in no sense under the in- 
fluence of the truth of the Spirit of God 
but really at the lowest ebb of sin and 
spiritual declension. If the Lord^s com- 
ing is really the triumph of the truth 
what can we make of such passages as 
these? ^^When the Son of Man cometh 
shall He find faith on the earth ?^^ or 
again, "As it was in the days of Noah so 
shall it be when the Son of Man shall be 
revealed/^ So far from the horoscope of 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 121 

prophecy revealing a future of Christian 
progress and world-wide righteousness 
under the present dispensation, the pro- 
phetic vision portrays an age of increas- 
ing unbelief, worldliness and sin growing 
more aggravated toward the close, while 
the true church of Christ as a little flock 
stands in the midst of prevailing declen- 
sion witnessing for Christ and waiting for 
His appearing. That appearing is al- 
ways represented as a clearly marked and 
unmistakable event, as manifest and as 
transcendent as the lightning which shin- 
eth from one end of heaven even unto the 
other. It is a great supernatural fact and 
the central figure of it will be the person 
of Christ Himself revealed in all His glory 
not only before the admiring eyes of His 
saints but before the vision of a startled 
world. 

WE SHALL BE CHANGED. 

II. The supernatural transformation of 
believers. This blessed Hope is going to 
bring not only the glorified Christ but the 
glorification of His saints. Those who 



122 PRESENT TRUTH. 

sleep shall be raised from the dead by a 
supernatural and instantaneous manifes- 
tation of the almighty power of Christ and 
the living shall be changed immediately 
afterwards. The change which will come 
to both will bring a complete transforma- 
tion into the perfect likeness of their 
glorified Head. 

The event is described in the most 
transcendent language. "^Tio shall change 
the body of our humiliation into the like- 
ness of the body of His glory according 
to the working whereby He is able even to 
subdue all things unto Himself .^^ 

In his argument from analogy in the 
fifteenth chapter of I. Corinthians the 
apostle Paul gives us some hints of the 
transcending glory of the resurrection 
body. He tells us it will be a spiritual 
body and a celestial body. It will be 
substantially the same as the body that 
sank to the tomb and yet it will be un- 
speakably different. The resemblance will 
be similar to that of the bare grain which 
we plant in the soil to the beautiful plant 
which springs from it covered with bios- 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 123 

som and abundant fruit. As the orange 
tree with its fresh and fragrant blossoms 
and its golden hanging fruit is to a little 
dry orange seed planted in the soil, so 
will the body of the glory be to this cor- 
ruptible form which we lay down at death. 
^^It is sown in corruption and it is raised 
in incorruption. It is sown in weak- 
ness; it is raised in power. It is sown a 
natural body, it is raised a spiritual body/^ 

TEANSCENDS QUE THOUGHT. 

The blessed truth of the resurrection 
and the glorified body is beyond the 
search of human philosophy and science. 
It is not a truth that can be learned by 
the ordinary processes of human knowl- 
edge. It is distinctly supernatural, and 
it must be accepted by faith as a doctrine 
of Divine revelation. 

And yet, even nature has some beauti- 
ful parables of it. The process of ger- 
mination from the buried seed is a Divine 
type of the resurrection. The exquisite 
silver jewel which the chemist can dis- 
solve in acid until it disappears from 



124 PRESENT TRUTH. 

view and then by precipitating some new 
acid into the solution can bring it back 
again and cast it into the crucible, re- 
making it in some more beautiful form. 

This is man's rude anticipation of God^s 
glorious supernatural redemption. The 
supreme illustration and confirmation of 
this stupendous truth must ever be the 
simple fact that Christy the Head of hu- 
manity, has Himself died and risen from 
the dead, and His glorified body is the 
pattern and guarantee of our resurrection. 

THE EARTH TRANSFORMED. 

III. The supernatural transformation of 
the material world. Xot only will man 
be changed but his home will be the sub- 
ject of a transformation quite as wonder- 
ful. The traces of sin and the memories 
of suffering and death will be obliterated. 
The cemeteries mil disappear. The aw- 
ful fact of death will be but a memory of 
the distant past and the cemeteries will 
not only give up its dead but will cease to 
separate and destroy, and the wild and 
savage instincts of the lower orders of ere- 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 125 

ation will be subjected; the lion will be- 
come gentle as the ox; the wolf will lie 
down with the lamb; the asp and scor- 
pion will cease to sting; the feebler orders 
of the natural creation will no longer groan 
under the law that makes them a prey to 
the stronger. 

The very law of gravitation will be 
changed and in the new Jerusalem the 
streets shall be vertical as well as horizon- 
tal and we shall pass up and down as free- 
ly as we pass to and fro, for earth's attrac- 
tion will be forever broken and the centre 
of gravitation shall be the Lord Himself. 
The barren desert shall blossom as the 
rose. Earth's climates will be changed 
and ^^the sun shall not light on them nor 
any heat'' nor the biting frosts and win- 
ters no more distress again in yonder sum- 
mer land of love. Earth will be a heaven 
below. Paradise will be restored. The 
curse will be cancelled and all that in- 
finite wisdom, love and power can do to 
make this planet the paragon of nature 
will crown the glorious work of complete 
redemption. 



126 PRESENT TRUTH. 

GOOD GOVERNMENT. 

IV. This blessed Hope will bring a sup- 
ernatural transformation in the provi- 
dence of God and the government of the 
world and the universe. Man^s govern- 
ment has been proved and tried and found 
a pitiful failure. 

In the vision of Daniel the kings of 
earth are represented as a destructive pow- 
er of so many wild beasts, but the glorious 
promise is given that the saints of the 
Most High shall at length take the king- 
dom and '^^the dominion and the greatness 
of the kingdom under the whole heaven 
shall be given to the saints of the Most 
High whose kingdom is an everlasting 
kingdom and all dominions shall serve 
and obey Him.^^ Christ shall Himself be 
the sovereign Euler of the world. Zech- 
ariah has told us in the most definite lan- 
guage ^'^the Lord shall be King over all 
the earth. In that day shall there be 
one Lord and His name one and it shall 
come to pass that every one that is left of 
all the nations which came against Jeru- 
salem shall even go up from year to year 



I 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 127 

to worship the King, the Lord of Hosts, 
and to keep the Feast of Tabernacles/^ 

This is the very song of the redeemed 
saints — "He hath made ns unto God 
kings and priests^^ and we shall reign upon 
the earth. This is the very promise of 
the closing vision of the Apocalypse 
"blessed and holy is he that hath part in 
the first resurrection. On such the sec- 
ond death hath no power but they shall be 
priests of God and of Christ and shall 
reign with Him a thousand years.^^ 

Among earth's vast burdens has been 
the curse of corrupt government, her po- 
litical and social systems shall never be 
right until He shall come whose right it is 
to reign. Christ's coming is the only 
remedy for the wrongs of society and the 
diseases of the body politic. Let us be 
true to the responsibility of Christian citi- 
zenship but let us ever remember that our 
citizenship is in heaven whence w^e are ex- 
pecting earth's true King. 

OTHER WOBLDS. 

The new adjustment of this earth will 



128 PRESENT TRUTH. 

affect all other worlds. There is a sense 
in which Christ's redemption is to recon- 
cile all things both in heaven and on 
earth. Jnst what all this shall mean it is 
impossible even in the light of Scripture 
fully to foretell but beyond the millennial 
years there will certainly be a larger and 
grander unfolding in the ages of ages re- 
sulting at length in the new heavens and 
new earthy wherein righteousness alone 
shall dwell and the application in some 
way of the^ great principl e unfolded and 
established in the story of human redemp- 
tion to all the distant worlds of space and 
all parts of God's universal empire. Per- 
haps these constellations are yet to be dis- 
tant colonies from this redeemed planet, 
and the vast dominions and principalities 
over which the saints shall reign as the 
promised reward of their service and fidel- 
ity here. 

THREE RACES . 

The forms of human life during these 
coming ages are sufficiently outlined to 
make this at least clear that during the 



I 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 129 

millennial age there will be three distinct 
peoples upon this planet. First will be 
the nations of earth which will still go on 
on the human plane as they do today ex- 
cepting only that they shall be the sub- 
jects of Christ's kingdom and enjoy the 
blessed privileges of His universal reign 
of righteousness and peace. 

THE JEWS. 

The next will be the Jewish nation 
which is to continue in fulfillment of the 
promise to Abraham and David for a 
thousand generations. This will be the 
supreme nation and Israel from Jerusalem 
shall exercise a world-wide influence of a 
sovereign city governed directly by God 
Himself, and fulfilling the high concep- 
tion of ancient theocracy without its im- 
perfections and mournful failures. David 
is to reign over his ancient kingdom as the 
direct vice-regent of Christ, and Abraham 
is to enjoy with all his seed the glorious 
fulfillment of the mighty promises for 
which he has waited so long, and Israel 
is to realize literally as a nation the yet 



130 PRESENT TRUTH. 

unfulfilled vision of ancient Hebrew 
prophecy. 

THE GLORIFIED. 

But there will be a third race, namely 
— the risen and translated saints who will 
reign upon the earth and yet possess a 
heavenly life and a spiritual body. Their 
government of the world will be under the 
immediate direction of the Lord Jesus 
Christ Himself, their ever-present King. 
They will be the executive officers of this 
kingdom and their power may be similar 
to that of angelic beings now who have so 
prominent a part in the affairs of nature 
and we know are employed by God in con- 
trolling the affairs of nations and check- 
ing and counteracting in human affairs 
the hate of Satan and the objections and 
oppositions of wicked men. 

The risen saints in the millennial age 
shall have free and constant access to the 
material world and the whole system of 
human life, visiting men. visible to them, 
and oft engaged in conflicts with them 
but living on a far higher plane. Like 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 131 

vhe angels who came to Abraham and like 
the Lord Himself during the forty days, 
they will doubtless be able to eat and 
drink and to sit down in simple loving 
fellowship at human tables and in earth^s 
family circleS;, but they will not need the 
nourishment of food nor refreshment of 
sleep and the supply of our present physi- 
cal wants. Their life will be supernatural 
and directly sustained from the Lord 
Himself. As Christ has told us they shall 
be in some sense like the angels who 
neither marry nor are given in marriage, 
neither can they die any more being the 
children of the resurrection. It may be 
that we shall dwell with our glorified Lord 
not exactly on earth but perhaps above it 
in the new Jerusalem which may be the 
dwelling place of the saints during the 
millennial age as well as afterwards, a 
city let down from heaven, yet touching 
earth and in constant intercourse with its 
inhabitants. 

We need, of course, to be careful of 
ideal or daring speculations respecting 
things which so far transcend our present 



1S2 PRESENT TRUTH. 

range of thought and conception^ and yet 
we know enough of our Lord^s resurrec- 
tion life during the forty days, to inspire 
our hearts with the most delightful an- 
ticipations of the glorified life that awaits 
us so soon, and of which He has said to 
us respecting many a fond hope which 
perhaps we could not prove and yet which 
we dare to cherish, ^^If it were not so I 
would have told you." 

A PRESENT TRUTH. 

In conclusion, the supernatural Hope 
of the Lord^s coming is a present truth 
because, in the first place, it is a true an- 
tidote to the humanitarianism of our age. 
Self-sufficient man is building his tower 
of Babel and projecting his future Uto- 
pias of ambition and imagination. But 
over all these God is laughing from the 
heavens and saying, ^^Yet have I set my 
King upon My holy hill of Zion." Let 
men dream their fond and foolish dreams. 
Let them make their investments and 
calculations for centuries to come, but we 
look for a "city which hath foundations 
whose builder and maker is God.^^ 



J 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 133 

THE KEY OF HI&TOKY. 

Second^ this blessed Hope is the only 
explanation and key for facts of human 
history and providences and the problems 
and perplexities which they create. All 
the past becomes plain if we read it in 
the light of God^s plan^ and contemporary 
history is reduced to simplicity as we see 
in the centre of all the movements of our 
time God^s distinct purpose to prove 
earthly governments a failure^ to over- 
rule the affairs of States and nations for 
the calling out of His people from all 
lands^ to preserve the seed of Abraham 
distinct from and supremely above all 
other raceS;, and to put down the systems 
of iniquity which are hindering His pur- 
poses concerning Israel and the church. 
Read in the light of prophecy we can un- 
derstand the rise and fall of Babylon, 
Persia, Greece and Rome; we can under- 
stand the broken maps of Europe and the 
dismembered kingdoms of the past; we 
can understand the rise and decadence of 
Papal and Mohammedan powers; we can 
understand the supremacy of the English 



134 PRESENT TRUTH. 

people, especially in naval affairs of the 
age; we can understand the growing 
strength of Eussia in the north, of Eng- 
land in the south; we can understand the 
Turkish massacres, the Armenian horrors, 
the outbursts of Mohammedan fanaticism, 
the persecution of Israel and enjoy the re- 
markable rallying of the nation around 
the standard of Zion and the hope of a 
speedy restoration of their national ex- 
istence. We can undertsand the increas- 
ing commercial activity and strange wick- 
edness of our age, and along with the 
deeper life of the little flock and the 
broader enterprise of world-wide mis- 
sions. He that is Head over all things 
for His body the church is preparing 
the last great conflict and marshalling the 
forces of earth and heaven for the day 
of the Lord. 

THE HIGHEST INSPIKATION. 

x\gain, this supernatural Hope is the 
highest inspiration of Christian life and 
work. There is no truth more inspiring, 
calling us out from this doomed earth to 



THE SUPERNATURAL HOPE. 135 

fix our hopes and ambitions in the coming 
kingdom. There is no truth more sanc- 
tifying impelling ns to make sure not only 
of the white robe of holiness, but the 
wedding robe of the deeper love that alone 
can fit us for the meeting with our Bride- 
groom, and calling us to receive the bap- 
tism of the Holy Ghost as the oil in our 
vessels which will save us from the folly 
and failure of the foolish virgins. 

ITS MOTIVE POWER. 

In like manner it is the great incentive 
to diligent and faithful service. We are 
working intelligently with a well defined 
aim and a glorious expectation. We are 
not beating air and looking in vain for the 
conversion of the world, but we are co- 
operating with our coming Lord and giv- 
ing the Gospel as a witness to all nations 
as the one last condition preceding His 
advent. So far from those who hold this 
doctrine being indifferent to missions^ 
they are the men most intensely aroused 
to the necessity and importance of this 
great work because they understand the 



136 PRESENT TRUTH. 

times and know what Israel ought to do. 
and are giving out in the last two move- 
ments of our age the message to the 
streets and lanes of the city^ and the mes- 
sage to the highways aind hedges and 
the outcast millions of the world. 

EKIXGS COXYICTION TO SINNERS. 

And we believe that this blessed Su- 
pernatural Hope constitutes the most 
convincing and convicting message to lost 
meU;, and especially to the unevangelized 
nations of our time. There seem to be 
some especial emphasis in the pharse, 
"'^The Gospel of the kingdom/' used in 
connection with witnessing unto all na- 
"ions before the end come. 

A MISSIONARY MESSAGE. 

It seems to be suggested at least that 
the messengers are to go forth with a 
specific warning of the immediate coming 
of the King. May it be that we have not 
used as definitely and emphatically as we 
might this great message of such world 
awakening power. 

We remember how when Jonah went 



THE SUPERNATUKAL HOPE. 137 

to the Ninevites as an ambassador of 
heaven with a stormy announcement that 
within forty clays the King of Kings 
would deal in judgment with one of the 
wicked nations of earthy the whole nation 
from the king to the lowest slave were 
moved to fear and repentance, and in 
sackcloth and ashes sat and obtained the 
mercy of Jehovah. 

We know that when Paul preached to 
the Thessalonians this must have been 
his message to them, for he tells them in 
his first epistles that they turned from 
idols to serve the living and true God and 
wait for His Son in heaven. 

We remember also that in the last mis- 
sionary picture of the Apocalypse, the 
angel who bears the everlasting Gospel to 
all kindreds and nations and tribes and 
tongues, proclaims to them that the hour 
of God's judgment has come and calls 
upon them with the stupendous call to 
meet their Judge? Is this the present 
truth not only of the church of God 
against the worldliness and skepticism of 
our Christian lands but especially the 



138 I>RESENT TRUTH. 

present truth which we mre to go forth as 
ambassadors for Christ and deliver with 
divine authority and emphatic pointed- 
ness as His last message to the ungodly 
nations of the heathen world. 

It is an encouraging fact that today the 
great majority of foreign missionaries at 
present on the field fully believe this 
truth. May the Lord give wisdom and 
power rightly to divide it and mightily to 
proclaim it to a careless world. 



^ 



THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 

**We are His workmanship created in 
Christ Jesus unto good works which God 
hath before prepared that we should walk 
in them." Eph. xi. 10. 

The apostle here declares that our 
works are ^^prepared/^ for that is the true 
translation of the word, ^^that we should 
walk in them.^^ They are not our works, 
but His supplied to us through the Holy 
Ghost and the inworking of Christ, and 
we just work out ^^according to His work- 
ing that worketh in us mightily.^^ Our 
w^hole life must be supernatural to the 
close, and our very service must be re- 
ceived before it can be performed. "Re- 
ceiving a kingdom that cannot be moved. 
let us have grace whereby we may serve 
God acceptably with reverence and godly 
fear.^^ 

SUPERNATURAL POWER. 

1. We must have supernatural power 



140 PRESENT TKUTH. 

for our work. We must pass sentence of 
death upon our natural enthusiasm^ en- 
ergy and zeal; and^ dying to our own 
strength, we must receive power through 
the Holy Ghost and do our work in Him. 

Moses had to be rejected when he 
stepped forth at the age of forty in his 
own enthusiasm to deliver Israel. After- 
wards, when he came hack at eighty, a 
broken man, humbled and conscious of his 
inefficiency, God could use him, like His 
OAvn rod, an instrument in the hands of 
Jehovah. 

CHEIST KECEIVED IT. 

Christ Himself continually recognized 
His power for service as divinely supplied. 
"I can do nothing of Myself,^^ He said; 
^^as I hear I speak. The Father that 
dwelleth in Me, He doeth the works.^' 
Therefore He did not begin His public 
ministry until He received the Holy Spirit 
and there was added to His divine Per- 
sonality a second divine Personality — the 
third Person of the Godhead. And as He 
went through His earthly ministry there 



I 



THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 141 

were two Persons united in His life work, 
the Son of God and the Spirit of God. 
He chose to be dependent upon the Spirit 
in order that He might be the more per- 
fect type of us in our dependence. 

Therefore His disciples were bidden to 
tarry in Jerusalem till they should be en- 
dued with power from on high. They 
were not suffered to go out in their own 
strength, but had to lean upon the Spirit 
for their wisdom, courage, faith and com- 
plete efficiency. 

No man is fitted for the humblest ser- 
vice in the church of God until He re- 
ceives the Divine baptism of the Holy 
Ghost. The mother needs it in the nur- 
sery, the Sunday school teacher in his 
class, the preacher in his pulpit, the soul 
winner in his dealings with the inquirer 
and the saint in his ministry of prayer in 
the secret closet. 

TARRY. 

There is no truth that needs to be more 
emphasized in this age of smartness, brag 
and human self-sufficiency than the im- 



142 PRESENT TRUTH. 

perative necessity of the baptism of the 
Holy Ghost as the condition of all effec- 
tive Christian work. We must tarry be- 
fore ^ye go. 

It pays to wait. The traveller pursued 
by his enemies lingered five minutes at 
the blacksmith's shop to have his horse 
re-shod^ and while some might have 
thought he was foolish thus to delay, yet 
he was truly wise, for as they drew near 
at the last moment and shouted their ex- 
pected triumph he leaped into the saddle 
and was soon far in the distance. A week 
spent at the source of a faith and power 
will bring more effective service than 
years of human effort in the energy of our 
highest gifts and loftiest genius. 

A SUPERNATURAL PLAN. 

2. We must have a supernatural plan. 
In the working out of a military campaign 
the commander relies upon the intelligent 
co-operation of his subordinate officers. If 
one division of the army were to rush into 
the attack regardless of the plan of the 
leader it might hinder instead of help. 



THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 143 

A very small force judiciously used at the 
salient point of attack or defence often 
turns an enemy's flank and changes the 
issue of a decisive battle. 

Christ has a plan in His mediatorial 
work. He does not send us forth to draw 
our bow at a venture and run wherever 
our fancy may dispose us, but He wants 
us to understand His method and work 
according to His great purpose. It is 
foreshadowed in the promise of the Spirit 
(Acts i. 8), the Gospel for the centre first, 
and then for the circumference, and then 
for the uttermost parts of the earth. 

god's plan of missionary work. 

That plan was more fully unfolded at 
the first great council of the Christian 
church in the fifteenth chapter of Acts 
and consists of three great sections. First, 
a visit to the Gentiles to take out of them 
a people for His name; secondly, the re- 
turn of the Lord and the restoration of 
Israel; thirdly, the Millennial reign with 
the ingathering of all the Gentiles. 

A wise worker will work according to 



144 PRESENT TRUTH. 

this plan. He will not attempt today the 
ingathering of all the Gentiles^ but will 
be occupied with the outgathering from 
them of the few who are to be the first 
fruits for His coming. He will not be 
devoting his attention to Israel supreme- 
ly, for the restoration of Israel is to come 
with the return of the Lord. His chief 
business will be to give the Gospel to the 
Gentile and gather out of them a people 
for His name. 

This will save us many a bitter disap- 
pointment. We will not be found trying 
to convert all the people in the world 
and stop all the abuses of our time. This 
belongs to the next dispensation. We are 
to be busily occupied rather in the great 
missionary work of the age and the bring- 
ing back of our King. 

SUPERNATUKAL DIRECTION. 

3. Supernatural direction. It is possi- 
ble to have a Divine plan and yet run at 
our own impulse in the direction of our 

SAUL. 

work. This was SauFs mistake. God 



THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 145 

sent him as IsraePs king to destroy his 
enemies, but Saul took the reins into his 
own hand and, instead of waiting for 
Samuel to lead, stepped out in front, and 
by his presumption destroyed himself and 
his kingdom. 

JOSHUA. 

This was Joshua^s danger. God had 
sent him and promised to bless him in 
bringing Israel into the Land of Promise. 
Joshua had an idea that he was to lead 
the armies of Israel, and so God had to 
meet him with a drawn sword and lay 
him on his face at the very outset of his 
career, and remind him that He, not 
Joshua, was Captain of the Lord^s host. 
Then Joshua became conqueror when he 
simply followed his conquering Leader. 

PHILIP. 

Very early in the Acts of the Apostles 
Philip had to learn this lesson. Preach- 
ing in Samaria with wonderful success, it 
seemed on all human principles that that 
was his immediate duty. But suddenly 
the Spirit commanded him to go down 



146 PRESENT TRUTH. 

into the desert, and he was wise and 
faithful enough to obey, to leave his work 
in Samaria and to go down a hundred 
miles into the lone wilderness until at last 
the leading was made plain, and the 
prince of Ethiopia was converted to God 
and became the pioneer of the Gospel in 
the great continent of Africa. 

PAUL. 

Even Paul and Silas had to be severely 
taught that they must go every moment 
at the direction of their supernatural 
Leader. Eushing forward in the accom- 
plishmicnt of their plans into Bythinia. 
Mysia and Asia, they were suddenly 
stopped by the Holy Ghost, ^The Spirit 
suffered them not/^ They had gone be- 
yond their personal Leader, and they were 
compelled to retrace their steps and get 
still before God and wait for new orders. 
They seemed to be doing good, but God 
was not pleased and would not have it. 

OUR GOOD WORK MAY HINDER. 

He does not want even orood work if it 



THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 147 

is not His very work for us at that very 
time. It is not true to say, I am doing 
some good, I am doing the best I know 
how. True service is doing the very 
thing that God has for you, doing it in 
His strength and wholly pleasing Him. 
If you are not doing this you may be hin- 
dering Him by your very Christian work. 
It is a serious question whether much of 
the religious work today is not entirely 
out of God^s will. I believe that many 
a man that is preaching today in an Amer- 
ican pulpit ought to be in some heathen 
iield, and because we are not in God^s will 
He blights our blessings and lets our 
churches run into foolishness, worldliness 
and sometimes infidelity. 

So Paul called a halt and waited for 
his Leader to point the way, and then he 
found that that way led them out of the 
field that he was cultivating across the 
Aegean sea into the continent of Europe 
and the kingdom of Greece. 

God hiid a great ultimate purpose in 
that which Paul could not foresee. He 
knew that the nations of modern hi,-- 



148 PRESENT TRUTH. 

tory were to have their theatre of action 
in that great continent. There our fore- 
fathers were to be born and thence were 
we to spring, and well may we thank God 
that Paul obeyed that Divine leading and 
gave up his own work to the work of the 
Master. 

Beloved, are you doing the very work 
God has for you? Did He redeem you for 
the purpose of spending your life in sel- 
fish amusement, or even in half-hearted 
conventional formalism which you call 
Christian work? Go to your knees and 
find out whether your life at last is going 
to prove a failure, and you discover too 
late that you have lost your way and 
have spent your strength in vain. 

DIVINE EFFICIENCY. 

4. Supernatural efficiency. God must 
give the increase and bring the fruition 
as well as lead the way, and He does give 
efficiency for the humblest ministries 
which are performed in Him. The seed 
may have seemed to lie in silence, but it 
is sure to spring forth and bring the har- 
vest. 



THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 149 

A SINGLE VERSE. 

A single sentence spoken by Mr. Spur- 
geon in an empty hall that the carpenters 
were fixing for his next Sabbath^s service 
reached the ear of a mechanic at his work- 
bench in an adjoining shop, and twenty- 
five years later Spnrgeon found when that 
man was on his deathbed that he had been 
saved through that arrow shot at a ven- 
ture because it was in the Holy Ghost. 

A MULTIPLIED LIFE. 

A little English girl lived and died un- 
known to all but her family and her pas- 
tor, but the beautiful story of her life was 
written by her minister, Leigh Eichmond, 
in a tract called "The Dairyman^s Daugh- 
ter.^^ That little tract fell into the hands 
of a young English noble who was wasting 
his splendid intellect in dissipation, and 
William Wilberforce arose from his peru- 
sal a consecrated Christian and became the 
emancipator of all the slaves in the British 
Empire. William Wilberforce wrote a 
little book called "The Practical View of 
Religion/^ and it fell into the hands of an 



150 PRESENT TRUTH. 

easy-going Scotch preacher who was ac- 
tually thinking of giving up his pulpit 
to teach Mathematics; but out of that lit- 
tle book was born the mighty soul of 
Thomas Chalmers, and out of his life came 
the Scottish Disruption, the Free Church, 
and the great movement for Christ and 
missions which that noble church has led 
and to which many of us owe our Chris- 
tian hopes. 

How marvellous the chain of Divine 
working! How mighty the efficiency of 
a little word! How immortal the Word 
of God, which liveth and abideth forever! 

ofte:n' unconscious. 

We shall not always be conscious of the 
power. Indeed it is our weakness that 
God most frequently uses. A little mes- 
sage spoken in great humility will become 
a seed in some other heart whose fruit 
will shake like Lebanon, and the blessing 
cover the earth and fill the heavens. "God 
hath chosen the weak things of this 
world to confound the mighty and 
the foolish things of this world to 



THE SUPERNATURAL WORK. 151 

confound the wise, and the base things 
of this world and the things which are 
despised hath God chosen, yea, and the 
things which are not, to bring to naught 
the things that are that no flesh should 
glory in His presence. But of Him are 
ye in Christ Jesus, who of God is made 
unto us wisdom and righteousness and 
sanctification and redemption that accord- 
ing as it is written he that glorieth let 
him glory in the Lord.^^ 

"Who then is Paul and who is ApoUos 
but ministers by whom ye believed, even 
as the Lord gave to every man. I have 
planted, Apollos watered, but God gave 
the increase. So then neither is he that 
planteth anything, neither he that water- 
planteth anything, neither he that watereth. 
but God that giveth the increase. There- 
fore let no man glory in men, for all 
things are yours, whether Paul, or Apol- 
los or Cephas, or the world, or life or 
death, or things present or things to come 
— all are yours, and ye are Christ's and 
Christ is God's.^' 



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